How PFI Works

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41778609

Both major parties are complicit in this blatant rip off: Labour under Blair and Brown and the Tories since then.

I cannot believe for one minute that no-one could see that this was going to be a financial millstone around our necks. And all these major players who provided the finance are groups who pay no tax into the exchequer so all mouth and no trousers.

xmiles wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41778609

Both major parties are complicit in this blatant rip off: Labour under Blair and Brown and the Tories since then.

PFI was introduced to the UK by John Major's Tory Government in 1992 in response to the absence of public funding for major projects and basically it was sold as being a straight choice between using PFI funding or not building at all. When Labour took over 5 years later they continued with it because politically a Government can deliver more services with a limited overall budget.
If Labour had reverted to funding major projects out of core funding they would have had to make cutbacks elsewhere and that would have been unpopular so like all politicians who have 5 years to do enough to get themselves re-elected they continued what the Tories had started. 
They all knew what the commitment was but took the "jam today" approach - the kind of short-termism that has been the bane of our system of Government since it began. 
Effectively it's part of the real national debt but the difference is that when the PFI contracts run out (typically 25 to 30 years) UK PLC doesn't own the assets.
The sad thing is that the majority of the British public don't realise that nowadays the UK is largely foreign-owned and the sell-off began in earnest with Thatcher flogging off our North Sea assets to fund her political career.