IT’S LIKE MORTGAGE FROM WONGA

THE SNP has been bought and sold for City profit. Nationalist Ministers promised to abolish PFI, but instead have just renamed it. The same profits go to the same shareholders, and it is still the taxpaying public left to foot the bill.

The people of Scotland deserve better than a government drowning in its own hypocrisy while using a private finance scheme that is well past its sell-by date.

All parties have used variations of PFI in the past, but with interest rates so low there is now an opportunity to do things differently – yet the SNP has set its face against change.

There is little or no transparency about how the Scottish Futures Trust is actually operating. It is almost impossible to discover who is actually profiting – to the tune of hundreds of millions – from building our schools and hospitals.

But we do know there are serious questions about future funding. It looks like the SNP government has maxed out the credit card without knowing if it can afford the repayments. Secondary market sales of debt could end up netting the equity investors up to three times the original capital they put in; and with interest rates now much lower than before, it is an extraordinarily expensive way of funding public infrastructure.

It is like going to Wonga for a mortgage, and it is simply not sustainable for the public purse.

We need a full-scale review of how the Scottish Futures Trust and its subsidiaries are operating. The SNP needs to open the accounts, showing all our assets and liabilities across the public sector.

Only then can we begin to determine if this is value for money and consider if there is a better way to invest in our infrastructure for the future.