Private Finance Initiative

PFI is a method of financing new schools, hospitals, streetlighting etc without the council or health service having to find the money up front. Instead a consortium of a building firm and a bank (or two) offer to build and run the service for a period of between 20 and 35 years. For this the public pays much, much more.

This is why we lead the fight to save Lewisham Hospital - two other hospitals were bankrupted by their PFI debts so Lewisham was going to be closed to force patients to Woolwich or Kings.

Lewisham PFI Contract Debts

Here is a chart of the PFI contracts Lewisham's Labour mayor committed us to.

The figure for payments this year is around £52million.

You can download the full figures for Lewisham's PFI contracts here.

Our Policy

We say these contracts have to be torn up and if John Hamilton is mayor we will argue in the courts that these contracts are "odious debt" a legal term which regards debts as unenforceable if they are imposed on a population by a ruler and are of no benefit to the people. It is a form of loan-sharking on a giant scale. See my condemnation of PFI 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the video www.tinyurl.com/HustingsVid.