:00:06. > :00:14.Tonight, Panorama investigates the multi-billion pound deals hidden
:00:14. > :00:17.from the taxpayer, threatening the future of hospitals. It has been a
:00:17. > :00:23.rip off, we've paid far more than we needed to. Deals that aren't
:00:23. > :00:25.always what they seem. Was Liverpool a fix? Yes, I believe so
:00:25. > :00:31.and I think ministers should have asked some tough questions about
:00:31. > :00:36.this project. Deals that sometimes test the patience of the public.
:00:36. > :00:39.What do you make of that? It's barking. And deals that have
:00:39. > :00:44.allowed a small group of companies and private financiers to make a
:00:44. > :00:48.fortune from taxpayers' money. Daily Telegraph of 28th January
:00:48. > :00:52.reported you as getting �8.6 million last year, is that correct?
:00:52. > :01:02.That's correct. Deals that will affect our schools, hospitals and
:01:02. > :01:29.
:01:29. > :01:37.Across the country, a new power is making its presence felt. Unelected
:01:37. > :01:44.and unaccountable. It's 10pm in Shipley, Yorkshire. The new Titus
:01:44. > :01:48.Salt school is lit up like a Christmas tree. All night long, the
:01:48. > :01:58.lights blaze away at this school, holiday and term time. A neighbour
:01:58. > :02:00.
:02:00. > :02:03.opposite says that she has to wear an eye mask to get to sleep. School
:02:03. > :02:07.budgets are falling, yet this school's electricity bill is going
:02:07. > :02:10.up in smoke. Now the green thing to do is for the last person who
:02:10. > :02:20.leaves to turn out the lights, but you can't at this school. It was
:02:20. > :02:24.
:02:24. > :02:27.I wanted a simple answer to this simple question. I asked the school,
:02:27. > :02:34.then the local authority, then the firm that maintains the school,
:02:34. > :02:40.even the PR firm they employed to handle my enquiry. No-one was
:02:40. > :02:50.prepared to shed light on this Welcome to the surreal world of a
:02:50. > :02:57.
:02:57. > :03:03.government scheme called the The sway of PFI is growing, but
:03:03. > :03:08.some of its customers are far from This junior football club in
:03:08. > :03:18.Worksop used to train at the local school. In 2007, that school got
:03:18. > :03:21.
:03:21. > :03:24.taken over by a PFI company. Prior to PFI, we were spending less than
:03:24. > :03:27.�2,000 a year on pitches and facilities. You mean booking
:03:27. > :03:31.pitches? Yes, indeed. Last season, it was just short of �4,000. This
:03:31. > :03:39.season, it will be in the order of �4,500-5,000. So it's more than
:03:39. > :03:42.doubled since PFI? Yes. We've seen the cost to these players go up
:03:42. > :03:47.from �60 a year to �90 to cover that. The PFI school owners,
:03:47. > :03:51.Balfour Beatty, say use of their pitches had increased sevenfold.
:03:51. > :03:56.Not so, say this soccer club. And cost, they say, is not the only
:03:57. > :04:02.problem. All of our activities are either in the evenings or at the
:04:02. > :04:07.weekends. The companies that do the pitch bookings work Monday to
:04:07. > :04:10.Friday, 9-5. So they don't have mobiles or anything of that sort?
:04:10. > :04:20.Well, rather amusingly, we were refused the mobile numbers of the
:04:20. > :04:22.
:04:22. > :04:24.caretakers under the Data Protection Act. Despite De Balfour
:04:25. > :04:32.Beatty's Health and Safety situation says we should contact
:04:33. > :04:36.them. What do you make of that? It's barking. The local MP agrees.
:04:36. > :04:39.In the past, you could go to the head teacher. The head teacher has
:04:39. > :04:42.no influence over the building and use of the facilities. The only
:04:42. > :04:45.people you can go to are the private company, the PFI contractor,
:04:45. > :04:54.who've got no interest whatsoever in discussing with the community,
:04:54. > :04:56.including with local MPs. They're Quite a lot of money, in fact. For
:04:56. > :05:06.two decades, Private Finance Initiative projects have been
:05:06. > :05:11.quietly clocking up. So far, to a They may not be household names,
:05:11. > :05:16.but they do form the backbone of our civic life. Nearly 1,000
:05:17. > :05:26.hospitals and schools now owned privately. And with more PFI
:05:27. > :05:31.
:05:31. > :05:35.In Liverpool, the local NHS wants a piece of this PFI action. They're
:05:35. > :05:45.desperate for a new hospital. The one they've got has been voted the
:05:45. > :05:46.
:05:47. > :05:49.ugliest building in the city. The The ceiling panels are very
:05:49. > :05:52.interesting in this hospital because all you've got to do,
:05:52. > :05:55.wherever you are, is look above you and you'll see fingerprints on all
:05:56. > :05:58.of the panels and that is because, for instance here, all of the
:05:58. > :06:05.facilities for our hospital, the water, the electricity, is all in
:06:05. > :06:10.the panels above where you are walking. And things keep going
:06:10. > :06:12.wrong? Things go wrong constantly. Our facilities department, in one
:06:12. > :06:20.month, recorded 1,300 reactive maintenance calls and that's leaks,
:06:20. > :06:23.electrical breakdowns, central heating breakdowns. A new hospital
:06:23. > :06:30.is going to cost over �1 billion, but even in these cash strapped
:06:30. > :06:34.times, Dr Williams says it's urgently needed. We lost several
:06:34. > :06:38.theatres over Christmas, for three to four days, because of leaks. We
:06:38. > :06:41.couldn't use a number of our theatres. Because you had to shut
:06:41. > :06:47.off the pipes to fix it? Absolutely. The ceiling was covered in plastic,
:06:47. > :06:55.Like almost every hospital built in the last decade, Liverpool has been
:06:55. > :07:05.encouraged to turn to Private Finance Initiative. Here's how the
:07:05. > :07:07.
:07:07. > :07:13.Private companies borrow the money to build the hospital. They usually
:07:13. > :07:18.also clean and maintain it once it's opened. The NHS then pays them
:07:18. > :07:25.a 30-year mortgage to use it. Ministers like PFI because it works
:07:25. > :07:29.like a credit card - THEY buy now, we all pay later. It's very
:07:30. > :07:32.seductive politically. If you were the Prime Minister, I can get you
:07:32. > :07:40.to announce more new hospitals with this machine than you dreamed
:07:40. > :07:44.possible, and you like that. And I do like it. I don't like it if it
:07:44. > :07:49.shows on my bank balance. It's your successor's bank balance so you
:07:49. > :07:55.needn't worry. That DOES sound good. And some PFI projects HAVE saved
:07:55. > :08:00.taxpayers money. The M6 toll road was much needed. Private money
:08:00. > :08:03.built it. And it earns its keep from motorists who choose to use it.
:08:03. > :08:06.Some very good infrastructure got built. There's no doubt about it.
:08:06. > :08:15.Some very good infrastructure got built. It was just built at an
:08:15. > :08:20.The real story is the enormous additional cost that we as
:08:20. > :08:23.taxpayers have been paying. Tens of billions of pounds for public
:08:23. > :08:33.infrastructure that was built over the last 15 years, and that, I'm
:08:33. > :08:34.
:08:34. > :08:40.The PFI credit card comes with some very tough terms and conditions. In
:08:40. > :08:44.fact, it's a very inflexible friend. Take this fire control centre and
:08:44. > :08:50.eight others like it. All but one have been empty since they were
:08:50. > :08:53.built because the fire brigade don't want to use them after all.
:08:53. > :08:56.If these white elephants were owned by the Government, they could least
:08:56. > :09:01.sell them on, pull the building down, at least do something useful
:09:01. > :09:04.with the land. But with PFI, you're stuck. A contract is a contract,
:09:04. > :09:14.and the owners get paid for a generation whether the buildings
:09:14. > :09:22.That contract means the owners collect nearly �40,000 a day in
:09:23. > :09:27.rent and maintenance on this herd of white elephants. At least half a
:09:27. > :09:33.billion will be wasted by the end of the contract. Not exactly value
:09:34. > :09:38.for money. It's as though you went out and bought a plasma screen on a
:09:38. > :09:45.credit card. The difference, unfortunately, with PFI is that's a
:09:45. > :09:52.25-year plasma screen repayment. And the amounts involved are tens
:09:52. > :09:59.or hundreds of billions. That will be hanging over my children,
:09:59. > :10:07.undoubtedly. And the children of all of us. But for some, PFI has
:10:07. > :10:10.been the goose that laid the golden Next stop on my journey around PFI
:10:10. > :10:17.Britain, an MP who says his hospital's had to learn some hard
:10:17. > :10:20.lessons about PFI. Too often there has been this sort of rather hazy,
:10:20. > :10:23.slightly dopey assumption that all will work out for the best and the
:10:23. > :10:33.best of all possible worlds, and that the private sector isn't out
:10:33. > :10:42.there to make a buck as quickly as it can. Opened in 2001, the Norfolk
:10:42. > :10:45.and Norwich was one of the country's first PFI hospitals.
:10:45. > :10:47.We've learned the hospital wanted the contract rewritten to let them
:10:47. > :10:50.share in any windfall the new owners might make. The Department
:10:50. > :10:53.of Health stopped this. We understand this was Treasury policy.
:10:53. > :10:57.I think at the time they were very keen to attract the private sector
:10:57. > :11:00.in. It was the first sizeable deal to come along and they bent over
:11:00. > :11:02.backwards to attract the private sector. Sure enough, within two
:11:02. > :11:05.years the owners, Octagon Healthcare, got a cheaper mortgage,
:11:05. > :11:15.and thanks to the taxpayer, they could write themselves a cheque for
:11:15. > :11:16.
:11:16. > :11:18.�116 million on a hospital that After the deal had been done, I
:11:19. > :11:22.wrote to all the shareholders of Octagon, including Serco, who were
:11:22. > :11:25.a small shareholder at the time, and said, look, you've made a big
:11:26. > :11:29.gain, how about giving us a little bit of it to one of our charitable
:11:29. > :11:35.trusts. The only shareholder who responded was Serco, who still do
:11:35. > :11:40.the hospital maintenance and catering. Serco have become part of
:11:40. > :11:48.the hospital. I think for Octagon, perhaps inevitably, we are a
:11:48. > :11:51.contract first and foremost. We're an income stream. After Octagon's
:11:51. > :11:54.windfall arrived, they did hand over �30 million to the hospital,
:11:54. > :12:01.but they still walked away with �82 million thanks to the taxpayer -
:12:01. > :12:09.money that could have been used to treat patients. -- they did hand
:12:09. > :12:11.over �34 million. But you must have been kicking yourselves. Well, I
:12:11. > :12:19.hated seeing this money going over to these institutional investors
:12:19. > :12:25.when we could have used that money ourselves. Yeah, I hated it at the
:12:25. > :12:28.time. Hated them lining their pockets. They made a very good
:12:28. > :12:32.investment, didn't they? It was fleecing you, wasn't it? I don't
:12:32. > :12:41.think they were, I think fleecing is too pejorative. They'd made a
:12:41. > :12:44.So who are the investors reaping these rewards? They rarely speak
:12:44. > :12:53.publicly, but this summer MPs called the bosses of two of the
:12:53. > :12:55.major investment funds to account. One of them manages investments in
:12:55. > :13:04.19 hospitals including Norfolk and Norwich, run by Octagon, over 260
:13:04. > :13:08.schools and PFI defence contracts worth �3 billion. His name is David
:13:08. > :13:13.Metter. The Daily Telegraph of 28th January reported you as getting pay
:13:13. > :13:16.and benefits of �8.6 million - is that correct? That's correct.
:13:16. > :13:20.That's correct. In an environment when the whole country is going
:13:20. > :13:23.through a tough time, here are you, paid more than the chief executive
:13:24. > :13:28.of the Royal Bank of Scotland. I respond to that? I haven't
:13:28. > :13:32.finished my question yet. David Metter is the frontman for the PFI
:13:32. > :13:38.industry. He, like other PFI businessmen we approached, didn't
:13:38. > :13:43.want to be interviewed by Panorama. Go to all these hospitals, schools
:13:43. > :13:50.and railways lines, and ask them the question. Do you think these
:13:50. > :13:53.work? Mostly, our public sector customers are very happy. So when
:13:53. > :13:57.David Metter said, and I quote, "I think UK PLC is getting an
:13:57. > :14:02.excellent deal," do you agree with that? No. I certainly don't agree
:14:02. > :14:06.with that. The best financial deal, without doubt, are the PFI
:14:06. > :14:12.investors. What the public have got is hospitals and schools built that
:14:12. > :14:19.would otherwise not have been built. Not only built, insists Mr Metter,
:14:19. > :14:21.but on time and to budget. The argument is that if you allow the
:14:21. > :14:27.public sector to take control of these huge infrastructure projects,
:14:27. > :14:30.you end up paying a lot more. There's some truth in that, isn't
:14:30. > :14:35.there? Cheerleaders and critics of PFI can both cite the anecdotes
:14:35. > :14:39.they like. But what you have to do is you have to look across the
:14:39. > :14:49.whole piece. And across the piece, its performance is not much better.
:14:49. > :14:51.
:14:51. > :14:58.On to Bromley, South London. This Government says that some PFI deals
:14:58. > :15:02.are pushing NHS trusts to the brink of financial collapse. PFI's
:15:02. > :15:06.chickens are coming home to roost. This is the princess Royal Hospital
:15:06. > :15:13.in South London. It is another hospital project that has helped
:15:13. > :15:17.fill out the size of Mr Metter's wallets.
:15:17. > :15:23.Mr Metter and his fellow investors were able to take out a cash
:15:23. > :15:27.windfall, this time of �30 million. Today they are earning an average
:15:28. > :15:32.return on their investment of 70% every year.
:15:32. > :15:38.It is hugely excessive and particularly relative to the risks
:15:39. > :15:44.that are being borne this is an extremely high return. Mr Metter
:15:44. > :15:48.stresses the princess Royal is not typical of most PFI deals, but that
:15:48. > :15:53.doesn't help the hospital. It is one of the most expensive PFIs in
:15:53. > :16:01.Britain, repayments eat up a fifth of its income. The trust has debts
:16:01. > :16:07.of nearly �140 million and rising. A repayment on a PFI investment is
:16:07. > :16:12.a first call on your resources so if you are running a trust or a
:16:12. > :16:17.hospital trust or a school you have to pay that before you pay any
:16:17. > :16:22.doctor, nurse, teacher or anything. The Government department that is
:16:22. > :16:29.supposed to safeguard the interests of taxpayers is Her Majestys
:16:29. > :16:34.Treasury, the PFI buck stops here. For years, the Treasury has claimed
:16:34. > :16:38.that despite the higher repayment costs of PFI, it is still value for
:16:38. > :16:45.money, especially because the private sector, not the public
:16:45. > :16:49.sector, has taken over the risk and the cost of the unknown. Really?
:16:49. > :16:57.For a hospital, one of the biggest risks over the lifetime of their
:16:57. > :17:02.PFI contract is inflation, now at 5%. PFI companies have protected
:17:02. > :17:07.themselves against inflation, but a Panorama survey shows that
:17:08. > :17:12.hospitals are bearing the brunt of T we contacted nearly all PFI
:17:12. > :17:16.hospitals in England. 89% confirmed they are locked into loan
:17:17. > :17:20.repayments which rise fully with inflation. All this while the NHS
:17:20. > :17:25.is having to make unprecedented savings.
:17:25. > :17:31.It means you get fewer operations, fewer medicines, less care for
:17:31. > :17:36.every �1 you spend. I think that there will be cuts in
:17:36. > :17:42.health services to patients to pay for the costs of the PFI deal and
:17:42. > :17:47.that's a real, real concern. And it was a concern that was
:17:47. > :17:51.foreseen here at the Treasury. Hospitals were warned against
:17:52. > :17:55.locking themselves into contracts that were fully linked to inflation.
:17:55. > :18:00.So why didn't the Treasury stop them?
:18:00. > :18:09.Because said the Treasury in a statement to Panorama their role
:18:09. > :18:13.was to provide advice and guidance and the guidance was not manttry.
:18:13. > :18:17.-- mandatory. What do you think of the treasury's
:18:17. > :18:21.oversight role, do you think they have been vigilant enough? No, I
:18:21. > :18:27.don't think they have been vigilant. I think they have been very
:18:27. > :18:35.partisan in the way they have overseen the letting of PFI
:18:35. > :18:40.contracts. My next destination, Scotland.
:18:40. > :18:45.Despite the Treasury's claim that PFI is value for money, the full
:18:45. > :18:50.financial details are secret. But in Edinburgh, a husband and wife
:18:51. > :18:55.team has unearthed details that the taxpayer was never meant to see. Dr
:18:55. > :19:03.Jim Cuthbert is the former chief statistician at Scottish Office and
:19:03. > :19:11.his wife, Margaret is an economist. They have acquired the secret data
:19:11. > :19:18.for six projects that exposed the true cost of PFI. We found in a
:19:18. > :19:21.number of cases that they could actually have put up two hospitals
:19:21. > :19:24.instead of the one that they were putting up.
:19:24. > :19:29.It would be wrong to give the impression this is rocket science
:19:29. > :19:33.and complex. I think at the level of the ordinary person in the
:19:33. > :19:41.street, they fully understand what happens if on a credit card you
:19:41. > :19:47.don't pay off your credit card and the debt can escalate.
:19:47. > :19:54.Cuthberts found the hospitals were locked into schemes that generated
:19:54. > :20:00.big profits for the PFIs. They don't show up on Britain's
:20:00. > :20:05.bank balance because they are charged to the PFI credit card. Is
:20:05. > :20:12.PFI dodgy accounting? Well, I do actually subscribe to the view that
:20:12. > :20:18.this was dodgy accounting. It is dodgy because it should have been
:20:18. > :20:22.transparent. This was a type of accountancy that was going to lead
:20:22. > :20:26.to grief in the economy. The Treasury insist that more
:20:26. > :20:31.recent PFI deals have offered taxpayers much better value for
:20:31. > :20:33.money. But have they really? Remember the Royal Liverpool
:20:33. > :20:38.Hospital where the operating theatres are flooding and the
:20:38. > :20:45.buildings falling down? Like almost all other big hospital projects,
:20:45. > :20:50.Liverpool won't go ahead if the local NHS can't use the PFI credit
:20:50. > :20:53.card. There is no realistic public sector option for almost all of
:20:53. > :20:57.those schemes. There isn't the public capital available in the
:20:57. > :21:02.Department of Health to fund them. So from the point of view of the
:21:02. > :21:05.individual trust, they are looking at PFI as the only game in town.
:21:05. > :21:12.The Department of Health insists that they have done the sums for
:21:12. > :21:16.Liverpool and they show that PFI is the best value for money. However,
:21:16. > :21:21.we have obtained confidential Government documents that suggest
:21:21. > :21:27.the calculations were manipulated in PFI's favour.
:21:27. > :21:32.The documents reveal that in December 2009, PFI was found to be
:21:32. > :21:36.significantly more expensive and and -- than if the Government built
:21:36. > :21:39.the hospital and that wean the answer that either the trust or the
:21:39. > :21:43.Department of Health wanted. Knowing how these things are done,
:21:44. > :21:47.they must have been desperate. I mean they must have used every
:21:47. > :21:55.telephone directory, spare dictionary to prop that PFI scheme
:21:55. > :22:00.Our confidential documents show that the sums were done again.
:22:00. > :22:07.Whereas four months earlier, the the sums showed that PFI was more
:22:07. > :22:12.expensive, now they showed PFI was cheaper. The dirty secret is that
:22:12. > :22:15.everybody who approaches this exam and fills in their exam paper came
:22:15. > :22:19.to the exam knowing or believing hat hat answer was already.
:22:19. > :22:24.We looked at how the sums were redone. Even though the contract
:22:24. > :22:31.had not been tendered the trust assumed the winner would settle for
:22:31. > :22:38.lower profits than almost every other PFI deal and even then PF I
:22:38. > :22:45.only scraped home by a whisker, cheaper by 0.03%.
:22:45. > :22:49.It is a spuriously precise rul. The truth is the -- result. The truth
:22:50. > :22:55.is the amount of certainty that relates to the assumptions being
:22:55. > :23:01.made here is is so vast that such a small difference between the cost
:23:02. > :23:05.of public procurement and the cost of P PFI are meaningless. Decision
:23:05. > :23:10.whether to go with PFI really matters. Some believe if the
:23:10. > :23:13.Government built the hospital itself it might save �0.5 billion
:23:14. > :23:20.which could buy Liverpool �15 million of extra healthcare every
:23:20. > :23:27.year for the next 34 years. �15 million would buy you nearly
:23:27. > :23:31.200 full fully staffed beds or a lot of nurse. Clearly a lot of
:23:31. > :23:37.healthcare and it will affect the health of Liverpool.
:23:37. > :23:43.Was Liverpool a fix? Yes. I believe so. I think ministers should have
:23:43. > :23:47.asked some tough questions about this project.
:23:47. > :23:51.Tough questions particularly because as the the confidential
:23:51. > :23:57.documents reveal, a warning by the Department of Health that the risk
:23:57. > :24:02.of the new hospital not being able to afford its PFI payments was
:24:02. > :24:09.significant. And yet the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has given
:24:09. > :24:14.the thumbs-up to Liverpool's PFI. Which is strange because Andrew
:24:14. > :24:20.Lansley has been complaining loudly about how PFI has brought parts of
:24:20. > :24:23.the NHS to the brink of financial collapse. We wanted to ask him
:24:23. > :24:27.about the new hospital in Liverpool, but like everybody else in this
:24:27. > :24:32.programme with questions to answer, he didn't want to be interviewed.
:24:32. > :24:37.In statements to Panorama, the Department of Health and NHS trust
:24:37. > :24:42.in Liverpool denied any manipulation of the calculations.
:24:42. > :24:51.It is not even clear the hospital can afford it.
:24:51. > :24:55.We showed our evidence to Hodge, the MP who -- Margaret Hodge who
:24:55. > :24:59.oversees the committee. I think Liverpool is a fix on the
:24:59. > :25:05.basis of the documents you showed me and that is bad decision making
:25:05. > :25:08.and that is not serving the interests of the taxpayer properly.
:25:08. > :25:14.If they want to build a hospital in Liverpool and this is the only way
:25:14. > :25:18.they can build it, fine, but be transparent and open about the real
:25:18. > :25:23.costs to the taxpayer, to the Health Service, not just today, but
:25:23. > :25:28.over the 30 year life of that PFI deal.
:25:28. > :25:32.Perhaps the most puzzling question in all this is why did this
:25:32. > :25:38.country's economic elite, the Treasury, allow the private sector
:25:38. > :25:43.such latitude when it came to taxpayers money? Many of the senior
:25:43. > :25:47.people, the Treasury appointed to expand PFI and check any excess
:25:47. > :25:52.themselves were financial consultants and bankers whose firms
:25:52. > :25:58.have made millions from PFI, back and forth they have gone, between
:25:58. > :26:04.the Treasury and the City. Geoffrey Spence used to work for the bank
:26:04. > :26:10.HSBC, now he is on his third stint at the Treasury. Richard Abadie
:26:10. > :26:14.came on on secondment from PWC and has returned there. Charles Lloyd
:26:14. > :26:20.was loaned out by PWC, he too has returned there.
:26:20. > :26:28.We have had more than one person in front of this this committee whose
:26:28. > :26:32.job title was PFI head of policy who was a secondee from one of the
:26:32. > :26:35.major accounting firms. You have accountants, bankers, consultants
:26:35. > :26:40.and lawyers who have an interest in keeping the thing going.
:26:40. > :26:45.We wanted to talk to some of these former officials who have moved
:26:45. > :26:49.backwards and forwards between the Treasury and the City, not aus of
:26:49. > :26:53.any suggestion -- because of any suggestion of improprietary because
:26:53. > :26:57.there is no none. We wanted to hear their response to the criticism
:26:57. > :27:04.from all parties against PFI, but like everybody eltion, they didn't
:27:04. > :27:10.-- else, they didn't want to be interviewed nor nor did chancellor,
:27:10. > :27:20.George Osborne which is surprising? Why? Because in opposition the
:27:20. > :27:25.Chancellor and his colleagues were scathing about PFI.
:27:25. > :27:30.It is an accounting dodge. It is a way in which Government can pretend
:27:30. > :27:40.they are not borrowing money when they are.
:27:40. > :27:40.
:27:40. > :27:44.The Government have signed many PFI schemes with more on the cards.
:27:44. > :27:50.In Opposition all parties criticise PFI. Once in Government, parties
:27:50. > :27:55.tend to realise there isn't a Plan Treasury announced a review of PFI,
:27:55. > :28:01.they told Panorama this would see the end of PFI as we know it for
:28:01. > :28:03.many this can't come too soon. I would disband the NHS PFI unit. I
:28:03. > :28:11.would drop a hydrogen bomb on it, yes.
:28:11. > :28:15.Drop a hydrogen bomb on it? Yes, wi. In his mini Budget tomorrow, the
:28:15. > :28:20.chore is expected to seek another �20 billion from the private sector
:28:20. > :28:25.for new projects. Criticising the PFI credit card in opposition is
:28:25. > :28:32.one thing, in office resisting the temptation to keep using it maybe
:28:32. > :28:34.quite another. Next week, secret shopping - do