The Private Finance Initiative: nationalise the Special Purpose Vehicles and end profiteering from public assets

This is a radical proposal by the People vs Barts PFI campaign which has been researching and discussing ‘what to do about PFI’ for several years. The paper explains what SPVs are, how SPVs spin off private profit from public assets and proposes a mechanism for nationalising the SPVs. Proposals to strengthen the public design, project management and ‘intelligent client’ functions be strengthened in non-PFI public sector construction projects and problems with the proposal to centralise the debt are detailed in two appendices. A proposal to centralise and reduce PFI obligations contained in Part 4 of the NHS Reinstatement Bill are also examined. Access paper:

Somerset CC terminates contract with IBM

The Council finally terminated the 2007 contract after years of failing to achieve savings, poor performance, expensive contractual disputes and returning some services in-house. Details of these events are contained in various editions of the PPP Strategic Partnership Database.

Two reports by ESSU predicted these problems – Somerset ISIS or Crisis and Southwest One Lessons and New Agenda.

Dave Orr, a retired UNISON member, and Nigel Behan, UNITE, undertook a rigorous investigative 8-year campaign to expose the fundamental flaws in the contract.