St BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL AND THE PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE

EDM number 636 in 1996-97, proposed by Brian Sedgemore on 11/03/1997.

That this House welcomes the news that serious delays to the ú300 million PFI for the Royal Hospitals NHS Trust mean that St Bartholemew's Hospital can now be saved by an incoming Labour government; notes that civil servants at the Department of Health in Leeds where the scheme is being masterminded have confirmed that there is no chance of the contract for the PFI being signed before the end of the year because (1) there are at present no final design or costings, (2) the developer has not yet persuaded the banks to come up with the necessary finance and (3) Department of Health economists and financial experts have yet to examine the scheme; notes that the proposed developers, Health Management Group, have confirmed that they do not at the moment have the money to go ahead with the scheme; and is pleased that all this means that the PFI in its current form is dead and that an incoming Labour government will now be able to replace the one-site scheme with a two-site scheme with Barts and the London Hospital working side by side.

This motion has been signed by a total of 31 MPs.