‘I don’t trust Labour with our NHS-Jeremy Corbyn was right about NHS debt’.

It was Labour, under Tony Blair, who expanded PFI to levels unseen and crippled our NHS with a generation of privately financed debt that makes dodgy PPE deals to Michelle Mone look like pocket money.

Romford Councillor David Taylor today shares his Taylor Talks column in the Havering Daily.

 In August 2015, Jeremy Corbyn wrote an article in The Guardian that caught my eye, even as someone who is a devout Conservative and has worked at the heart of Conservative HQ. 

 “We have a duty”, Corbyn said, “… to remove the toxic burden of the private finance initiative from our NHS”. 

 Our NHS is facing a debt crisis, it’s a generational debt that is costing our local NHS trust over £50m a year, it is a crisis where the NHS is paying up to 10% interest on finance at a time when the government could borrow at just 5%. 

 Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) are a national scandal and they have crippled our NHS. Walk into Queens and ask yourself some questions. Specifically, as yourself what it could do with an extra £50m a year?

 It’s not often that I find myself in agreement with a Labour leader, let alone Jeremy Corbyn. It’s also very risky for me to even write, “I agree with Jeremy”, given what’s going on right now (psst, there’s an election). But sometimes we have to put aside our lazy political allegiances and ask ourself what’s best for the country. Sometimes, we need to look across the political divide and say “Not everything they say is wrong”. Grown-up politics. 

So ,what is PFI, how much do we have, why do I dislike it, and what’s being done about it? 

Good questions. 

 PFI is a way to get new infrastructure without stumping up the cash up front. Private firms are called in to design, build, and run facilities such as schools or hospitals. This is how Queens was built. 

Queens was constructed by Bovis Lend Lease under a £261m PFI agreement. It was handed over to the local NHS trust in 2006 (remember that date) and it came with a 36 year agreement. This means that, until 2042 it is a combination of banks and a private firm who decide what is best for Queens when it comes to how it operates. 

 The IPPR, an independent charity which campaigns for the NHS, described in 2019 that “there are £3bn worth of critical maintenance issues unresolved [in the NHS]”. These include fire safety hazards, sewage leaks, falling ceilings, things that pose a genuine danger. It is the responsibility of these PFI firms to fix these. 

In 2018 the British Medical Journal estimated that the NHS will pay out a total of £275bn, just based on the existing PFI deals. For comparison, NHS England had day to day spending over £155.1bn in 2022/23. 

 Many PFI deals are signed in such a way that the company benefiting from them makes around 8-10% return a year. That’s 8-10% profit, to a private company, from our NHS. What’s even more scandalous about this is that the government, even during Covid, was able to borrow at 5% interest. So, we’re paying twice as much interest as we need to and it’s going to private companies who are leaving our hospitals full of sewage leaks. 

 According to The Guardian, the interest on these loans could fund 15,000 new nurses. 

 Do you think 15,000 new nurses would be great? I do.

You may find it odd, at this point, that a Conservatives Cllr is writing an article condemning the privatisation of the NHS and agreeing with Jeremy Corbyn. Don’t worry, I have also pinched myself a lot to make sure this isn’t a fantasy. 

So, what’s my point? My point is that these deals exploded under Labour, Tony Blair to be exact. 

PFI was first invented by a Conservative government, that’s true. But their use skyrocketed when Labour were last in government. So we’ve got a Conservatives Councillor, agreeing with Jeremy Corbyn, during an election, accusing the Labour party of privatising the NHS. 

 What a world we live in. No, I’ve not taken any drugs. 

 Philip Hammond, when Chancellor in 2018, stopped future PFI deals. “I have never signed a PFI contract… and I never will”, he said. Even Sadiq Khan criticised the use of PFI debt, in 2015, acknowledging that our local NHS spends 11.3% of it’s income on repaying these deals. 

 Colin Leys, a retired professor in political economy told OpenDemocracy.net that “NHS reforms under Tony Blair were a significant milestone [in privatisation]”. Allyson Pollock, a clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University said, in her book The Privatisation of Our Health Care, “It’s nonsense to say it’s all down to George Osborne… each successive administration since the 90’s bears responsibility for the crisis”. 

 So, not one to disagree with professors, every government is to blame here. All political sides. 

 It was Labour, under Tony Blair, who expanded PFI to levels unseen and crippled our NHS with a generation of privately financed debt that makes dodgy PPE deals to Michelle Mone look like pocket money (which it isn’t, it’s criminal). But, my party also bears responsibility because we didn’t do enough about this. 

 That was, I believe, until Sunak. 

 As Chancellor, and during Covid, Rishi Sunak cancelled over £13bn of NHS debt. That’s not something we hear much about, but it’s a huge sum and we can’t ignore it. Under the Conservatives, under Rishi Sunak, the government finally began to acknowledge that the NHS is burdened by too much debt. 

 Cancelling the debt is one of the smartest things someone can do to support someone in need. It’s frees someone up to start again, to invest what they were spending. £13bn of cancelled debt is £13bn more to spend on fixing things and getting it back to where it needs to be. 

 I wish the Conservatives had cancelled the debt earlier. But, at least they are finally doing it (far far far before any election was called). 

 Conservatives ended PFI, and yet they still managed to deliver the new health hub at St George’s in Hornchurch. They have shown that the NHS can be invested into and grown without taking on £billions in private debt. This delivers better value for money for taxpayers than Blair’s NHS expansion.

 The Conservatives have promised to cut waste by reducing the number of NHS managers by 5,500, releasing £550m for frontline services instead. 

In 1944, when Churchill was Prime Minister, cinema goers were presented with a news announcement from the Conservatives Health Minister. 

 “Our plan is a service”, the minister said. “Whatever your income, if you want to use this service… there will be no charge for doing so. The National Health Service will include family doctors… medicines, specialist advice, and hospital treatment whatever the illness”. 

 Labour supporters will have you believe it was Labour who came up with the concept of the NHS. They are wrong, it was Churchill’s Health Minister and the evidence is there. 

 Labour supporters will tell you that only they can be trusted to run the NHS. 

 Jeremy Corbyn disagrees. 

 In 2002, at Labour Party Conference, the union UNISON tabled a motion calling on the Labour Party to end PFI deals and to review them. 65% of people backed the plan, but Labour carried on. 

 Much of the PFI debt is owned offshore, it generates massive profits for private companies and they avoid paying tax. 

 This isn’t the NHS that Nye Bevan dreamed of, and it isn’t the NHS we keep being told Labour love. 

 I agree with Jeremy Corbyn. It is time the Labour party faced up to the damage it did to our NHS, the massive privatisation and the huge debt it created. 

 Rishi Sunak has begun to fix that mess and cancelled debt. It’s come late, but it’s welcomed. 

 When we think who to vote for we should look at people’s history. Labour won’t face up to what they did, Rishi Sunak has begun to fix it. 

 I don’t trust Labour with our NHS.

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