§ Mr. JackTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer which projects relating to his Department that appeared in the Private Finance Panel's list of 29 November 1995(a) have been completed, (b) are still pending, (c) have been dropped and (d) are being pursued by means other than a public private partnership. [105876]
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§ Mr. Andrew SmithThe Treasury is responsible for the activities of the now-disbanded Private Finance Panel, so I will answer the right hon. Member's series of questions on this issue for the Government as a whole.
The information currently available is given in a table, a copy of which I am placing in the Library of the House.
Following disbandment of the Private Finance Panel and Executive, the Treasury Taskforce adopted a database designed only to cover those projects with a realistic change of being achieved through PFI.
The coverage of this database is therefore not identical to that of the 29 November 1995 table. In particular, the database cannot identify the anonymised projects referred to in that table, and the information sought could be obtained (if at all) only at disproportionate cost. In the case of DETR this is true of all projects.
What the present table clearly shows is the great progress made by this Government since 1 May 1997 in reinvigorating PFI. Of the 250+ signed PFI deals since 1986, only 70 were achieved in the seven years prior to the election. In the first two and a half years of this administration, we have broken the logjam and are delivering much needed, high quality, value for money public services.