The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167497   Message #4042391
Posted By: Nigel Parsons
27-Mar-20 - 08:29 AM
Thread Name: BS: UK politics. Last ditch attempt
Subject: RE: BS: UK politics. Last ditch attempt
I'll never defend Labour kicking off prescription charges, PFI or the academicisation of schools. In both those latter cases, what started as small but wrong-headed initiatives have ballooned gleefully UNDER THE TORIES into massive corrupting blights, so it ill-behoves Tories to keep on castigating Labour for them. If the Tories thought the initiatives were wrong, well why didn't they abandon them?

Part of the reason the NHS is short of money is the PFI initiatives signed up to by the Labour Government. The ongoing cost of these initiatives (paid from the NHS budget) was kept off the balance sheet of the government at that time.
These PFI initiatives were contracts with the providers. The Conservative Government could only end these by either reneging on the contracts (illegal), or buying them out (very costly as a 'one-off' payment which would fall into current expenditure).
How do you think that the Conservatives could 'abandon them'?