Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

6
Just imagine what could buy for that in a time
of supposed austerity. My rough calculations
suggest it would cover the salaries for all the
nurses, all the consultants and all the GPs
needed to serve the NHS for 10 years – and
you would still have billions left over to train
the next generation or two of surgeons, build
80 state of the art hospitals, and treat tens of
thousands of cancer patients for a year.
To put it more simply: it would cover the
entire NHS budget for approximately two
and a half years.
We are constantly told that there is no
money left; that we cannot afford the NHS
as it is currently run, or to fund high quality
public services. Yet there is plenty of money
for the banks and for Private Finance
Initiatives (PFI). And the UK Private Finance
Initiatives (PFI) debt is four times the size of
the budget deficit used to justify austerity. In
other words, austerity is a political choice
rather than a necessity.
Innisfree, a small finance company based
in the City of London, is one of the biggest
players in the Private Finance Initiatives
(PFI) market. One of Innisfree’s flagship
projects is the largest NHS Private Finance
Initiatives (PFI) scheme at St Bartholomew’s
and the Royal London hospitals in London.
This could have been publicly financed for
around £1bn; instead, it will end up costing
£7bn by the time repayments are complete
in 2049. The difference of £6bn will go
to PFI consortium Skanska Innisfree and
partners. To put these figures into a more
digestible format, Barts is paying over £2m
a week in interest, which adds up to over
£120m a year, before they see a single
patient.
Innisfree chief executive David Metter was
paid £8.6m in 2010. It’s no surprise that
a majority of NHS hospitals are now in
deficit with Private Finance Initiatives (PFI)
as a major factor. And you thought your
mortgage was bad. Just imagine if they
could spend that money on patient care.
The majority shareholder in Innisfree is
Coutts, the Queen’s bank. Coutts UK, in
turn, is owned by RBS. RBS thus effectively
has a controlling stake in hospitals,
boosting its profits whilst simultaneously
running public services into the ground.
It is worth recalling that the combined
bail-out and losses of RBS since the crash
amount to £95 billion. This is almost
equivalent to the NHS budget for a whole
year, yet it is still extracting profit out of the
NHS.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 13