Letters: The scandal of PFI has a long and shameful history

Mr Macwhirter leaves little room to supplement his case, but a key feature was that the “winner” of a contract was not tied to staying with it. Indeed, the practice of selling off the responsibility to a different firm resulted, curiously, in the creation of wealth with the seller pocketing the cash, but with no benefit at all for the client. The buyer was, apparently, content with gaining a public sector contract, and the guarantee of getting their money back – governments never renege on their commitments.

The fraudulent aspect of these arrangements was that the costs were off-balance sheet, so the Government's true financial position was distorted – Mr Macwhirter referred to in his article. That was remedied in later years.

We will all recall the birth of the £400 cost of changing a light bulb!

Also in the memory of the staff, particularly those in lower-paid posts, was that their pay suffered a marked reduction, as the new contractors took over.

Yet, PFI, and its associated Labour version PPP (Public Private Partnership) proceeded apace, without regard to the early pitfalls that had been identified.

It is tragi-comical to observe Labour and Conservative politicians in interviews blaming each other, when they were each in it up to their necks. I recall John (now Lord) Prescott positively salivating over the prospects of all that money being available – "traditional values in a modern setting "– my foot.

Douglas R Mayer,

76 Thomson Crescent, Currie.

A COMPANY that was awarded contracts worth millions of pounds by government goes bust, causing financial hardship for thousands of workers and small businesses while the senior members of the firm walk away with huge sums they gave themselves on the grounds of their skill in managing the company, and the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition use this to score points off each other ("Corbyn accuses Government of negligence over Carillion collapse", The Herald, January 18).

It was pointed out a generation ago that private finance initiatives (PFI) would be extremely expensive as these companies were only concerned about profit and this would inflate prices at the taxpayers' expense. This was derided by Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair, whose blinkered approach to economics was to quote those bits of Adam Smith that suited their agenda. Today thousands are paying the price of ignoring critics of PFI and the unbridled greed of those at the top of many financial institutions.

Government has to admit its mistakes and take immediate action to recover the monies that the men at the top hived off to the detriment of others. Ministers must do what they were elected to do and safeguard the public rather than turning this crisis into an altitudinal micturating competition.

T J Dowds,

6q Fleming Road, Cumbernauld.

WITH all the furore over the recent Carillion farce I thought it would be useful to set out in simple terms what really happened to our infrastructure over the last 30 or so years. When Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown privatised our previously nationalised industries, the man mountain of civil servants, which had previously managed and organised the same, did not go away. The civil servants were simply moved sideways and often upwards into supervisory and regulatory roles. The reality, therefore, was not that privatisation was more cost-efficient but the exact opposite. Not only was the poor old taxpayer having to pay the private companies profit but also having to fund a double helping of management costs.

There is a wise old adage that to get something done you should ask a busy person. The corollary to that, however, is perhaps the real tragedy of UK privatisation. Our regulatory civil servants, with more or less nothing to do, simply couldn’t find the time time to tackle even the simplest of tasks in their supposedly supervisory role. Carillion and their like were simply running rings round them: taking profit in the good times and anticipating taxpayer-funded rescue in the bad. Lemon socialism indeed. In Iceland it is far more accurately known as the Devil’s Socialism.

DH Telford,

11 Highfield Terrace, Fairlie.

THE Herald's resident extreme liberal, Chris Deerin, has excelled himself once again in his ongoing campaign to bar socialist thought from politics as illegitimate ("Local heroes are showing the way ahead for our democracy", The Herald, January 16). Mr Deerin is apparently upset at "a weak Tory minority government". So upset that he gushes with appreciation of a variety of alternative voices and sources of power in devolved administrations and the offices of new mayors in English cities and regions, even Labour ones, presumably as long as they are not judged to be "socialist".

What about the main opposition to the Tory Government in the UK parliament and outside it? You know, the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn which confounded the pollsters with a strong performance at the last General Election and put forward a costed, positive manifesto promoting investment in public services, progressive taxation and a role for public ownership to run services like rail for the good of the public? That's the party that could happily hold public rallies and meet normal people in the street.

Mr Deerin's broad-minded liberal tolerance apparently does not stretch that far. The strongest alternative voice to the Tories that has a realistic chance of replacing the Tory Government is dismissed in half a sentence as "a fruitcake Opposition". It seems that any variety of alternative to the Tory Government can be embraced, even an allegedly different form of Toryism in Holyrood, so long as it isn't socialist.

I would gently suggest to Mr Deerin that Stalinist Liberalism is not a good look. Perhaps he would like to interview Mr Corbyn or Richard Leonard and see if he can write a considered article on the contribution of socialist thought to modern politics. I look forward to it.

Tony Beekman,

47 Willowpark Court, Airdrie.