WEEKS before the National Audit Office (NAO) published its report into private finance initiatives/public–private partnership (PFI/PPP) I met with an academic friend and a postgraduate researcher. Researching the cost of PFI/PPP in the prison service they wanted to discuss my recollections from my time in office. It was a salutary reminder of the cost of PFI/PPP and the near-conspiracy that applied.

For a long time, even before the NAO disclosed that PFI/PPP will cost an additional £200 billion in further charges by 2040, even if no new such projects are instigated, I was convinced it was a collective lie in the corridors of power and the corporate boardroom. The public purse was being filched for private profit and in the realm of private prisons you need to consider who the real criminals are. As Woody Guthrie wrote in The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd – “as through this world I’ve wandered I’ve seen lots of funny men, some will rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen”.

As Justice Secretary I inherited the private prison at Kilmarnock and required to accept the contract already signed for Addiewell. However, I was able to roll back the planned PPP construction and operation of Low Moss and retain it as a public-sector prison.

I’m still bitterly disappointed that I couldn’t reverse the plans for Addiewell but the penalty clauses signed up to by the Labour/Liberal administration made it impossible. Rolling back Low Moss was essential though, as had it proceeded as planned it would have seen a tipping point reached from which there would have been no escape for the service from falling into private hands.

Around 30 per cent of capacity would have then been in private control with revenue costs such that only limited capital expenditure would have been available for any further state builds. With the perverse incentive to fill private prisons paid for anyway, the state sector would have further crumbled.

Reversing that remains something of which I’m proud, but it was no easy task as pressure was brought to bear from senior officials within both the prison service and justice department. For them it was, as it had been with Labour ministers before them, the “only game in town”. It was a New Labour mantra to an old Tory policy but repeated with gusto by many senior disciples.

I accept that I had an ideological opposition to private prisons and in that I wasn’t alone. My objections were shared by many not just old lefties like me. The most persuasive argument was made by Clive Fairweather, a former Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons and a man I very much respected. As a former SAS commander, he explained that when in that role he sometimes required to authorise the taking of life. That he said he could only do with the authority of the Crown on his cap badge. Prisons were similar he argued, taking somebody’s liberty could only be done with the authority of the state.

But, the cost was also fundamental and that’s where the conspiracy entered in. When still in opposition and Addiewell was being planned, another very bright young researcher working with sympathetic academics costed the entire project at more than £1 billion. That was vehemently denied by all and sundry in the corridors of power, although agreed by those in the rank and file who walked the corridors of prisons.

Later, as Justice Secretary I asked the then incumbent chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service to do his own sums. The bill he came back with was more than £940 million. That didn’t surprise me; what concerned me was the lies I had been told. Not only was the figure repudiated by those then in senior positions but I was even told I couldn’t say that private prisons were more expensive. I was advised that I could state it was an ideological preference but not that the state model was cheaper. Stand-up fights were required with senior staff to deliver change.

Now, I accept that running costs and staff costs over the lifetime of a prison need factored in. But, even with that there’s still a significant saving as the NAO confirm. Why then was I given that advice?

Those who gave it weren’t on the take and haven’t ended up on the boards of companies which have benefited. They were good people but their advice was not only flawed but has proven costly to us all. It can’t just be about debt being off the public balance sheet.

A few have been enriched and the rest of us left to foot the bill. It was a collective lie entered into by the rich and powerful. Why were we lied to is what needs exposed.