War of words as MSP slams PFI contracts
Labour says SNP trying to deflect attention
Millions of pounds of funding for education in South Lanarkshire is being swallowed up by Private Finance Initiative contracts.
Research from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) has found that the amount being forked out by South Lanarkshire Council (SLC) on the contracts is £36 million, which amounts to 11 per cent of its education resource funding.
Rutherglen MSP Clare Haughey has slammed the deals as “wretched” and “absurdly expensive”.
However, the local authority say that PFI has been justified, after it was used to fund the school’s modernisation programme to rebuild every primary and secondary school in the area.
When many PFI deals were signed the cost of annual bills were regularly linked to the now-discredited Retail Price Index measure of inflation. That meant many annual payments have been rising steeply while public-sector budgets have been cut.
The contracts were introduced by the Tories and adopted by Labour during their time at the helm of the Scottish Government.
Ms Haughey said: “The rotten PFI contracts were introduced by the Tories but supercharged by the Labour-led Scottish Government and unnecessarily cost councils across Scotland, including in South Lanarkshire.
“It is incredible that the lasting legacy of Labour governments continues to be felt as schools’ budgets are eaten up significantly by these wretched contracts.
“The SNP scrapped PFI contracts, meaning that money can be spent on Scotland’s young people and not on absurdly expensive contracts.
“This demonstrates how we still cannot trust Labour with the public purse in Scotland as we continue to pay for their disastrous decisions in government.”
Joe Fagan, the leader of Labour at the local authority, hit back and accused Ms Haughey of deflecting attention from her party’s own record in government.
He stated: “The SNP have zero credibility when it comes to council funding.
“Their claims to have scrapped PFI are overblown, when the changes they made were largely cosmetic, and their record on council funding is abysmal. The evidence of under-funded local services is all around us.
“As SNP-run South Lanarkshire Council’s own registers show, the biggest risks to council finances are the funding cuts Clare Haughey votes to impose on our communities year after year.
“It’s time for the SNP to confront their austerity shame and restore the council budgets they have decimated.
“Labour councillors will do what our SNP counterparts won’t and actually speak up for our communities, demanding our fair share of public spending.”
A spokesman for SLC said: “The council has utilised different financing options at different times in order to rebuild every single secondary and primary school in the area.
“The result is a fantastic learning environment for every pupil in the area, and what many consider to be the best schools estate in the United Kingdom, including 127 new primary schools that were funded directly by the council.”