PFI has always been controversial, but bipartisan consensus in its favour in Westminster has lasted for more than two decades. Introduced by Sir John Major in 1992, the schemes were super-charged by New Labour after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown won big in 1997 by convincing middle England of their prudence. The chancellor’s golden rules required him to keep debt and the deficit low, and PFI offered a way to upgrade the fabric of the state without breaking those rules because the debts incurred to fund infrastructure were held by private companies and kept off the government’s balance sheet. Mr Brown attributes the Labour conversion to PFI to Neil Kinnock, Mr Blair’s predecessor. In his recent memoir My Life, Our Times, the former prime minister…

Source: The Times January 18, 2018 00:06 UTC