HC Deb 23 March 2000 vol 346 cc634-5W
Jane Griffiths

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what amount of public funds was spent(a) on fees and (b) otherwise in respect of the private finance initiative proposals for the Royal Berkshire and Battle hospitals. [106698]

Mr. Denham

The Royal Berkshire and Battle Hospitals Trust has been involved in three private finance initiative schemes to dateConsolidation Project: a new build consolidating services on the Royal Berkshire Hospital site; Haemodialysis Unit: moving renal services from Dellwood Hospital to the Royal Berks site; and Information Management and Technology (IM and T) Project: a partnership to develop various interlinked IM and T systems.

The amount of public funds spent on fees and other PFI related costs to date are set out in the table.

Public expenditure on each project to March 2000
£000
To March 2000 Consolidation Haemodialysis IM and T
Fees
Legal Advice 26 30 35
Financial Advice 10 19 48
Other Advice 1517 12 13
Sub-total Fees 553 61 96
Other Costs
PFI Partner Exit Costs 2304 — —
Internal Project Costs3 284 20 —
Associated Estate Works — 84 —
Sub-total Other Costs 588 104 0
Total 1,141 165 96
1 A significant proportion of the cost for 'Other Advice' arose from seeking planning permissions for the project, some benefits from which have been passed on to the publicly funded project.
2 The trust board agreed to pay Proteam 2 (the private sector partner) this amount under an abortive cost agreement.
3 'Internal Project Costs' covers the additional cost of project management and staff working on the project. The IM and T project is very new and material internal project costs to date are very low. The estimate is that final fees will be £238,000 and internal project costs £265,000, including the figures in the table.