§ Matthew TaylorTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 4 July 2001,Official Report, column 169W, to my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), on the private finance initiative, if he will place a copy of the National Audit Office study concerning the private finance initiative in the Library. [3419]
§ Mr. Andrew SmithI am sorry that my written answer of 4 July to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) contained an inadvertent error. I mistakenly referred to a NAO report on PFI and value for money, when the information concerned was in fact set out in references to NAO value-for-money studies in the Arthur Andersen report that looked at value for money drivers in the private finance initiative. This report was published in January 2000.
The Arthur Andersen report referred to all 11 reports on specific UK PEI projects that the NAO had produced by the end of 1999. Seven of these NAO reports judged the projects value for money against a public sector comparator (PSC). Three of the 11 projects did not have a PSC: in two cases, they pre-dated the relevant Treasury guidance on the preparation of PSCs; in the third case, the inception of the project pre-dated the Treasury guidance, and no formal PSC was prepared but an internal value for money appraisal was undertaken. One report was not a NAO value-for-money study, so did not examine the PSC.
578WAnalysis of the seven NAO reports that did compare costs against a PSC showed an average PFI cost saving of 20 per cent.