Second health board discloses PFI/PPP contract

Second health board discloses PFI/PPP contract

A second Scottish health board is releasing the full contracts for its private finance initiative hospitals.

NHS Lanarkshire agreed to release the contracts, for hospitals in East Kilbride and Stonehouse, following a request by Alex Neil, a Scottish Nationalist member of the Edinburgh Parliament. “It is long-established that these credit-card style repayments do not offer the taxpayer value for money," said Mr Neil. "With resources clearly tight, it will be interesting to see if the PFI/PPP contracts used by NHS Lanarkshire are part of the solution or, as I suspect, part of the problem.”

The board's move follows the Scottish Information Commissioner's ruling two weeks ago that neighbouring NHS Lothian should release its own contracts.

More Scottish hospital PFIs under scrutiny (Public Private Finance, 7 November 2007)