Back in 2002 at Labour’s conference, UNISON inflicted a (then) rare defeat on the party leadership over the Private Finance Initiative – the union case being that the expensive leverage of private money to renew public services did not provide long term value-for-money (£267bn in repayments are due to be made to private companies over the next 50 years). Tragically, Labour didn’t listen to the unions when in power and there is a bitter irony that a decade later it has fallen to a Tory Chancellor George Osborne to announce a "fundamental reassessment" of the use of PFI contracts in a bid to cut costs:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15731755 See also
We said 11 years ago PFI was a bad deal - at last they’ve got it http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/siu/aug10/4.html
