‘PFI’ payments rise to £1.4bn

SPENDING on public debt payments soared to a new record high of £1.4billion last year, figures have revealed.

They show £1.423billion was spent on ‘unitary charge’ payments to private firms last year.

It was an increase from £1.413billion the previous year, and is higher than any other year.

The huge sums pay for the construction projects for a tranche of schools, roads and bridges and hospitals.

It includes the toxic legacy of Labour’s disastrous private finance initiative (PFI), as well as the cost of the SNP’s muchcriticised non-profit distributing (NPD) model. Figures published by the Scottish Government show that last year’s payments included £1.063billion related to the PFI scheme, and £360million for NPD.

The largest individual payments were from local authorities, at £641million, followed by the NHS, at £349million.

Labour ran up a huge bill with its ‘build now, pay later’ approach to public projects including building the Skye Bridge, which was initially quoted at £10.5million. The Bank of America was due to recoup £128million in tolls before an agreement was reached to buy it out and abolish the charges.

NPD was ushered in by the SNP after the ‘toxic’ PFI was scrapped in 2007. Under NPD, private contractors and lenders pay the upfront building and project costs, which will be added to the long-term debt of NHS boards, local councils and the roads agency Transport Scotland.

That debt, plus interest, is then paid off by authorities over a series of decades via regular payments known as unitary charges.