Overview

Following the announcement of a General Election in the UK next month, we provide an outline of what the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats have to say about PFI and PPP and we describe the wider implications for business.

This is part of The Election Briefing by Norton Rose, which covers corporate governance, takeovers policy and company law; climate change and energy; competition (antitrust) and economic regulation; employment and equality; environment; financial services regulation; Islamic finance; media and electronic communications regulation; pensions; PFI and PPP; planning and local government; rail and tax.

Public spending is one of the main battlegrounds of the Election. The recession in the UK has heaped problems on the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) - the form of PPP used for most public private projects in the UK - and now the public and Westminster have focused their attention back onto this form of public investment.

The amounts of money involved are enough to have a real impact on the economy. It is estimated that 630 schemes have been put in place since 1992, covering an investment of £63 billion and that taxpayers will have to pay private firms £217bn in user charges for these facilities between now and 20332.

Critics of PFI are also arguing that the data backing up the value-for-money claim is sparse and that the evidence for risk transfer is mixed. Not only that: many still suspect that the Government uses PFI as a form of finance in order to cook the Government books.

This briefing outlines what the main political parties think about PFI, and how they would reform it.

Click to read more.