Hospitals to cut services to pay for £60bn private finance deal
From:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5995025/Hospitals-to-cut-services-to-pay-for-pay-60bn-private-finance-deal.htmlHospitals will be forced to make cuts to pay for a massive rise in the bills for Labour's controversial private finance programme after the next general election.
Whitehall documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph reveal a financial bombshell which will hit the next Government.
The cost of NHS building deals agreed since 1997 will swell by almost one quarter from 2011 to 2014, necessitating billions of pounds in "efficiency savings", which are already being drawn up by trusts.
Economists described the pressures about to hit the health service as "horrendous" while opposition politicians warned that taxpayers and patients were about to pay the price for "financial recklessness on an unprecedented scale".
More than 100 NHS trusts are operating private finance initiatives (PFIs) agreed since 1997. Under the deals, private companies build hospitals and lease estates and services back to the health service over a period of around 30 years.
Of a total £60 billion debt owed to the developers, less than £5 billion will have been paid to them by the time of a likely general election next May, the document, disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, shows.
The contracts allow trusts to build hospitals that they could not afford to pay for outright, with the bills excluded from Britain's public sector borrowing limits, allowing the Government to take on more debt.
Repayments during the next spending review period – from 2011 to 2014 – will reach £4.18 billion, almost £1 billion more than current levels, according to the documents, sent from the Department of Health to the Treasury.
The steep increases come as the NHS prepares for its annual budget to be frozen, meaning cuts in real terms as PFI and other costs rise.
As a result, hospitals have been ordered by Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, to make "efficiency savings" of at least £15 billion over the same period.
The Department of Health returns to the Treasury show the £60 billion total cost of the schemes to taxpayers is more than five times the capital value of the buildings. Annual payments will rise from less than £500 million at the last election, in 2005, to £1.5 billion by 2014, peaking at £2.2 billion by 2029.
Something else the Gov has cocked up.
Angus
No comments:
Post a Comment