PFI AND PPP CONTRACTS

That this House welcomes the commitment given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that no further private finance initiatives (PFI) and public private partnerships (PPP) contracts will be entered into by the current Government; records that PFI and PPP was devised by the Treasury as an accounting mechanism to keep the capital costs of public projects off the Treasury balance sheet; recalls that this sleight of hand was embraced by the Major Government and, regrettably, continued by the Blair and Brown Governments, despite mounting evidence that it offered extremely poor value for money for taxpayers; notes that the senior Treasury official credited with devising PFI and PPP was Stephen Robson, who was rewarded with a knighthood for efforts and who, on leaving the Treasury in 2001, served as a director of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS); and further notes that Robson was a director of RBS during the time when the Bank imploded due to mismanagement, and the taxpayer had to provide more than £45 billionn to bailout RBS's gambling debts.