NHS Waste of money and resources

previous governments paved the way for the current NHS situation. Labour are just as responsible as Torys.

I suggest that you go back a page and read trisher's post at 10.59, notanan

Or can you detail how Labour failed the health service in the 1997 -2010 period (apart from foolishly embracing PFI, which has left the NHS with a huge debt burden, but which didn't affect patient care or NHS services)?

MaizieD
I don't know what the up to date figures are, but in 2015 the NHS was spending more than £3,700 every minute to pay for PFI hospitals.
How can this obscene amount of money not affect patient or NHS services?

I remember when I first heard of PFI, thinking "that is just plain wrong". It was one of these dreadful policies like selling off council houses at a big discount without replacing them and privatising the railways by separating the track from the trains that to me, smacked of short-termism which would eventually have to be paid for.

In 1992 PFI was implemented for the first time in the UK by the Conservative government of John Major. It immediately proved controversial, and was attacked by the Labour Party while in opposition. Labour critics such as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman, said that PFI was really a back-door form of privatisation (House of Commons, 7 December 1993), and the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, warned that "apparent savings now could be countered by the formidable commitment on revenue expenditure in years to come".[10]

The use of PFI was very limited until 1997 but became widespread under the New Labour government.[11]

PFI was first used in developing countries who desperately needed key infrastructure like power stations and water treatment plants but after the 1980 third world funding crisis could not raise commercial loans. In those narrow circumstances PFI had a role to play. But in a modern economy there is no place for them.

But it is not just the PFI system that was at fault, the civil servants were grossly incompetent in how they negotiated these contracts and the construction companies ran rings round them. These contracts often included long term contracts for the contractor to undertake all the maintenance and supply of goods to the facility after it was operational leading to situations where changing a light bulb could cost £200, a pair of latex gloves £5.

If you read trisher's post that I referenced, petra you will see that it didn't affect patient care or NHS services.

(Though I completely agree that PFI is a disaster)

^ the civil servants were grossly incompetent in how they negotiated these contracts and the construction companies ran rings round them^

How much of it was negotiated by civil servants, though, MOnica?

During the latter years of the last Labour government I was working at a school which was planned to amalgamate with another local school and relocate to a new PFI build. I got the impression that the PFI contract was to be negotiated at Local Authority level. How much expertise in negotiating such contracts would you have expected to exist at that level? Look at the way that Amey has managed to run rings round Sheffield council and is busily cutting down swathes of healthy street trees. Sheffield appears to be unable to stop them because of the huge amount of compensation they would have to pay for terminating the contract.

Even at national level would you expect a high level of expertise in civil servants who had, I assume, previously had very little to do with such contracts? I'm completely hazy on this.

If the contract was between government, whether central, local or an agency, and the contractor, who else are the government side negotiators if not civil servants.

Local and National governments are negotiating and signing contracts with the private sector and negotiating with public bodies all the time and have been doing so through out my life and before. They should have teams of experienced and competent negotiators. They clearly don't.

Re public sector negotiating with private sector.
I went to work for the public sector after only having worked in the private sector (25 yrs)
I was horrified at their attitude towards the way money was spent. I can only assume that these negotiators have the same attitude. It doesn't matter, it's only the tax payers hard earned cash.

petra my experience is similar.

Theresa May has vowed to implement the Naylor proposals, which advises the government to sell off NHS assets in order to bring the health service budget under control. It could potentially mean £5.7bn worth of NHS assets are sold off to private firms or house-builders.

Currently all NHS land is controlled by the publicly-owned company NHS Property Services Ltd. The report calls for "urgent action to accelerate" land sales and transfer the property out of public hands. The government has said it will rewards hospitals who sell "surplus" land as quickly as possible.

The list of property identified for sale include; ambulance stations, clinics, staff accommodation and trust headquarters.

nursingnotes.co.uk/may-vows-implement-naylor-report-sell-off-surplus-nhs-property/

So Varian what will happen when said hospitals need to expand? Open another department or clinic? They will not have the land to do so. This is so short sighted it is unbelievable. When will governments ( mainly Conservative, it has to be said) realise that they cannot keep subsidising the running costs of the country by selling off every damned asset? Right from selling off council houses without using the funds to replace them through to this latest brilliant idea.

When Margaret Thatcher started to sell off public assets it did not go down well with Harold MacMillan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ssGrq5S3w

MacMillan and families like his wanted to pass down their assets to future generations. Of course many families never had much in the way of family silver but we all still own many precious assets although the privatisation begun under Thatcher has already robbed future generations of much and schemes like PFI merely involve passing on debt. It is a disgrace that short-term profiting to cover up mismanagement and lack of investment should be allowed to empoverish our children and grandchildren.

I know the comparison with a household budget is not always the correct way to look at it, but it is rather like me desperately looking around my house to see what I can sell at a boot sale to pay this month's housekeeping. If I sell my cooker and my fridge, and then have to rent replacements I will pay out more in the long term. Future generations are going to curse us all as they pay huge amounts of PFI on what will be crumbling public buildings, as their children jog indoors on treadmills because our generation sold off the playing fields, as they face a lifetime of moving from rented house to rented house with the uncertainty that entails. Not everything in the golden past was wonderful, but reading Alan Johnson's 2nd part of his biography where as a very young father he was able to pay rent on his council house, put food on the table, and have a pint on a Friday night I wonder where we have gone wrong. No, scratch that comment, I do know where we have gone wrong, and my conscience is clear because I didn't vote for the bloody woman or her government.