Ný skýrsla um einkaframkvæmd í Bretlandi – vaxandi efasemdir

Á sama tíma og fréttir berast frá íslenskum sveitarfélögum um áhuga á einkaframkvæmd berast varnaðarorð frá Bretlandi um ágæti þessarar aðferðar við rekstur á stofnunum og verkefnum á vegum hins opinbera. Bresku verkalýðssamtökin, Unison, hafa birt ítarlega skýrslu um einkaframkvæmd sem vakið hefur mikla umræðu í Bretlandi. Einkaframkvæmd (Private Finance Initiative, PFI) byggir á því að einkaaðilar reisa og reka opinberar stofnanir á borð við skóla, sjúkrahús og fangelsi. Þeir sjá um fjármögnun en ríki eða sveitarfélög ábyrgjast greiðslur iðulega áratugi fram í tímann. Á undanförnum 12 árum hafa verið gerðir samningar af þessu tagi (563 samningar, 451 þegar í framkvæmd) að verðmæti 36 milljarða sterlingspunda (sem margfalda má með u.þ.b. 130 til að fá upphæðina í íslenskum krónum). Breska ríkisstjórnin hefur réttlætt einkaframkvæmd á þeirri forsendu að áhættan í fjármögnun opinberrar starfsemi sé flutt frá hinu opinbera yfir á herðar einkaaðila, það réttlæti að þeir hafi hagnað af rekstrinum. Í skýrslunni kemur hins vegar fram að þetta byggir ekki á traustum forsendum. Í fyrsta lagi hafi litlar rannsóknir verið gerðar af hálfu opinberra aðila um þetta efni. Af 563 samningum sem ríkisstjórnin hafði gert fram í apríl sl. höfðu aðeins 8 samningar verið rannsakaðir en aðeins í einu tilviki hafði þessi þáttur verið kannaður sérstaklega. Í skýrslu Unison kemur hins vegar fram að fjárfestar séu varðir í bak og fyrir. Þannig hafi fjárfestar hinnar einkavæddu Vegabréfastofu (Passport Agency) fengið stuðning á kostnað skattborgara um 12,6 milljónir sterlingspunda þegar þeir lentu í ógöngum. Í einu rannsókninni sem breska ríkisendurskoðunin gerði á því samhengi sem er á milli áhættu og hagnaðar, og það var í tilviki Fazerkerley fangelsisins, kom fram að hagnaður fjárfesta var himinhár eða 61% hærri en gert hafði verið ráð fyrir. Fjárfestar taka því hagnaðinn en þeim er hjálpað þegar þeir lenda í erfiðleikum. Í breska ríkisútvarpinu, BBC, var fjallað ítarlega um þetta nýlega. Þar var m.a. staðnæmst við nýja hlið á þessum málum sem nú væri að koma fram: Samningar um einkaframkvæmd gangi nú kaupum og sölum á milli fjárfesta. Þannig hafi myndast eftirmarkaður með skóla, sjúkrahús og fangelsi! Í þættinum segir David Metter, formaður samráðsnefndar um PFI (Public Private partnership Forum) sem sjálfur á í fyrirtæki sem keypt hefur hluti í meira en 20 skólum, að hér sé um að ræða frjálsan markað og það sé hinu opinbera óviðkomandi þótt þeir hagnist á viðskiptum sínum! Richard Bacon, þingmaður Íhaldsflokksins (!) sem sæti á í opinberri nefnd um endurskoðun ríkisreikninga (Commons Public Accounts Committee), segir hins vegar að skattborgaranum komi við hvernig með fé hans er farið og verði fjárfestar í rekstri á vegum hins opinbera að sætta sig við meiri upplýsingaskyldu en í öðrum rekstri.

Hér að neðan er að finna slóðir á skýrslu Unison og BBC umfjöllun en auk þess birti ég útdrátt af vef BBC og fréttatilkynningu frá Unison.

 Úrdráttur frá Unison:   Frá UnisonJuly 2004

Public risk for private gain?: The public audit implications of risk transfer and  private finance

A new report from UNISON concludes that the case for the use of private finance in public services remains unevaluated 12 years after its introduction although £36 billion of PFI contracts have been signed and 451 PFI schemes are now up and running in the public sector.

Private finance is an expensive form of public borrowing that makes new claims on scarce public service budgets . Lenders are charging London Underground £450 million more, over the life of the PFI loan, than they would have charged for direct government borrowing. PFI hospitals and schools are subject to similar cost pressures.

Ministers claim that the extra costs of PFI are justified by the transfer of risks from the public to private sector.  They argue that private financiers make a charge for taking on the risks of project failure that would otherwise be borne by the public sector. If the risks do  not materialise the contractors stand to make significant profits. However the Public Accounts Committee has complained twice to the government about the lack of information and in 2003 it said: “We have sought on a number of occasions to gain an understanding of the relationship between the returns which contractors earn from PFI projects and the risks they actually bear. At present the available information is limited and rather mixed…”

This report set out to establish whether the government had put in place the necessary checks to monitor whether these goals were being met, drawing on key findings of the National Audit Office reviews of operational PFIs since these reviews present the only systematic attempt to examine what PFI means in practice.

The authors found that of the 563 PFI deals signed by April 2003 only 8 financial inquiries into central government operational PFIs had been undertaken by the National Audit Office and that, with one exception, the relationship between risk and the extra cost to the public of using private finance had not been audited.

In the only NAO evaluation of risk and profit, the study of Fazerkerley Prison, the NAO showed that PFI earnings were not justified by risk transfer or private sector efficiency and that PFI shareholders made windfall profits £10.7 million (61%) higher than projected when the deal was signed. 

This report highlights the complex and secretive nature of the PFI deals which shield both government and the PFI companies from proper scrutiny. It shows the government has not collected the data which would allow the parliamentary watchdog, the National Audit Office, to  compare the costs of  public and private finance and evaluate whether and at what costs risks are transferred. The financial terms are not in the public domain nor are the methodology and assumptions underpinning risk transfer and contractors’ profits. 

The report also highlights the ways in which the returns to banks and shareholders are underpinned by government guarantees and bail-outs  to protect private companies. For example, Siemens’ shareholders were protected when the Passport Agency PFI went disastrously wrong at a cost to the public of £12.6 million.

The authors conclude that failure to evaluate the government’s case undermines parliamentary scrutiny of public spending.

 http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=1569

 Af fréttavef BBC:

The private finance initiative - the policy of using private companies to provide schools, hospitals and other facilities for the public sector -  is at the heart of the government’s attempts to modernise Britain's aging infrastructure.

The policy has long been controversial because of the high cost of some projects and the fact that the public sector is tied into long term repayment deals.

But this week, File on 4 reveals a new source of controversy with the emergence of a little known – but rapidly growing – market, in which companies which have won contracts are selling them on for large profits.

Gerry Northam investigates this so-called "secondary market" in which schools and hospitals and other public projects are changing hands and asks whether taxpayers are entitled to any share in the windfalls that are being made?

The chairman of the Public Private Partnership Forum, David Metter, whose own company has recently bought a large shareholding in more than twenty schools argues that the PFI shares market should be like any other, and that investors should be free to take their own profits:

"These are not public assets but private sector concessions," says Mr Metter."So during the period of concession the private sector effectively owns the school or hospital."

But a member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Conservative MP Richard Bacon, tells the programme that taxpayers need more information to judge whether they are getting value for money from the deals that are being made:

“My own view is that if you are a contractor taking money from taxpayers for providing services you have to accept that it entails on your part a higher degree of disclosure and a higher degree of transparency than would be the case if you are operating in the purely private sector,” he says.

"People have to accept that if they're going to take the taxpayer's shilling, they have to be transparent." 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/fileon4/index.shtml