§ People pay their taxes in order to get good quality public services, not to accumulate state-owned buildings. This simple truth has led to the development of the private finance initiative.
The PFI helps to square the circle of sound public finances and growing demand for better and more modern public services by tapping the expertise and the resources of the private sector.
A year ago we had agreed £1.5 billion worth of deals—now we have agreed £7 billion, and we are on course to double that by March 1999. Time and again the taxpayer is getting better value for money, through new road schemes, new prison services, and information technology projects. And reforms to local government rules are bringing the PFI into new areas, notably schools.
London is currently experiencing a transport investment boom under the PFI: the channel tunnel rail link, Thameslink 2000, the docklands light railway extension, and the A40 and A13 improvements. This is in addition to conventional public and private capital spending on the Jubilee line extension, the Heathrow express and the new A12-M11 Hackney link. Investment in London Transport is now running at 50 per cent. in real terms above the average for the 1980s. London will soon become one of the biggest construction sites in the country. As a defiantly provincial Nottingham man, I can only say that I hope that London will be even nicer when it is finished.
Adding traditional capital spending to PFI investment, publicly sponsored capital spending in the United Kingdom in the next three years will be substantially higher in real terms than it was in the 1980s.