Senior government lawyers and auditors are to be sent into seven NHS hospital trusts on the brink of bankruptcy which have been saddled with “absolutely disgraceful” private finance initiative contracts.
Simon Burns, the health minister, said that he will be sending in “hit squads” to make savings at hospitals where the contracts have gone “horribly wrong”.
He says that the deals show a “cavalier disregard” for taxpayers’ money and points out that hospitals are being forced to pay £242 for a padlock to be changed and £466 for a new light fitting.
Throughout the NHS, hospitals have signed PFI deals worth more than £79 billion, of which only eight per cent had been repaid by 2010. The deals involved private firms building and maintaining hospitals, with the money repaid over decades.
Mr Burns, who is the minister responsible for the day-to-day running of the NHS, said officials have identified £1.5 billion of savings which can be made.
Asked if the schemes were a mistake, he said: “In the form that they were agreed, with what, to my mind is a cavalier disregard for cost efficiency and value for taxpayers’ money, yes.”
The hospital trusts which need rescuing care for more than two million people. They are: Barking, Havering and Redbridge; Dartford and Gravesham; Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells; North Cumbria; Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals; and St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust. Experts will also be sent into South London Healthcare which has already been taken over by a specialist management team. Between them, the seven trusts are responsible for 12 hospitals and several specialist centres. “There are these seven which are at the top of the scale, which are having a significant drag on their day-today running because of the PFI costs,” said Mr Burns.
“We have announced that we will help those seven trusts with financial assistance. Seven hospitals got it horribly wrong. It is an absolute disgrace.”
Eddie
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