These contracts were protected by commercial confidentiality, limiting public scrutiny. Parliamentary records confirm cases where hospitals paid hundreds of pounds for routine tasks (like changing a lightbulb) — a result of extreme cost inflation and weak accountability.
PFI contracts didn’t stop at construction. Private firms typically retained control of cleaning, maintenance, catering and portering through long‑term bundled contracts, often with automatic inflation uplifts and strong penalties for exit or renegotiation.
PFI worked like a national credit card. £50bn built the assets—but by March 2024 there were 665 contracts still active, with ~£136bn in payments locked in until the 2050s, hitting hospitals, schools etc long after construction ended. It is a disaster as I will show in the next few days.
The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) began in the early 1990s to fund hospitals, schools & roads without showing public borrowing. Private firms paid upfront; the state repaid them over 25–30+ years. The cost was hidden off the balance sheet.
Title graphic that reads, "Secret: Your Co-Workers Actually Care About Making Your Workplace Better. The image has the Labor Notes slingshot logo on the top left, and pictures of the headshots of co-hosts Natascha Elena Uhlmann and Danielle Smith. There are 3-D versions of the shocked emoji based on the Edvard Munch painting 'The Scream' and the head exploding emoji.
🎙️ Hear the first of a three-part Labor Notes Pod series on our “Secrets of a Successful Organizer” training on foundational organizing skills
In this first installment, we explore the idea that apathy isn't real, i.e. Your Co-Workers Actually Want a Better Workplace! labornotespodcast.podbean.com
Compared with the last non‑overlapping period (and the following figures are averages):
• Men have lost 1.8 years of healthy life expectancy
• Women have lost 2.5 years
These are large declines by historical standards — and the sharper fall for women is particularly stark.
More from the ONS report on health.
Healthy life expectancy at birth has fallen to its lowest level since records began (2011–13) for both men and women — despite small post‑pandemic rises in overall life expectancy.
Many are living slightly longer, but spending more of their lives in poor health.
Some of Labour's anti‑poverty measures will help, but as things stand there’s little reason to believe outcomes in the poorest areas will substantially improve. Labour's fiscal rules and a limited view of what’s possible, risk locking in today’s inequalities rather than closing them.
Latest ONS data shows a stark health divide in England. People in the most deprived areas spend less than 50 years of their lives in good health on average. In the least deprived areas, that figure is around 70 years. This gap is a national scandal, or it should be.
National demonstration for rent controls and council housing : thelabourcampaignforcouncilhousing.org/2026/03/09/n...
British Steel 'needs nationalising by the summer'.
The whole industry needs nationalising. It relies on never-ending public subsidies. Profits privatised, losses socialised.
Private sector only looks at short-term profits, can't do national planning.
Resident doctors are once again out on the picket lines across England. This dispute was entirely avoidable. We were close to getting a deal before the Government changed the goalposts at the last minute.
All resident doctors are asking for is a fair offer on jobs and pay.
Even in the wildest dreams of the ‘drill baby, drill crowd’, the UK cannot become self-sufficient in oil and gas. We will still be at the mercy of events elsewhere. The UK can, and should, become energy self-sufficient via renewables and a move to electric vehicles, buses etc.
America is self-sufficient in oil and gas. According to Reform and the Tories they should be insulated from what is happening in the Gulf. In reality US petrol and diesel prices have sharply increased because of the war against Iran. Having your own oil/gas is not a protection.
in what critics will no doubt see as his very own interference with the country’s electoral process'. Indeed!
Just read this in the Guardian: 'The US vice-president JD Vance has just repeatedly criticised allegedly unprecedented and “disgraceful” foreign interference in the Hungarian parliamentary election, while effectively strongly endorsing Viktor Orbán to win the vote on Sunday
Full solidarity with the BMA. The government could have prevented the dispute but as the video shows, Ministers back tracked on a possible deal at the last moment. They should go back to the union and seek a deal.
What we saw in Bucha makes it clear that Russia’s war isn’t anti‑imperialist. It destroys democracy, terrorises communities and suppresses trade unions. No narrative can hide the brutality inflicted on Ukrainians living under occupation.
During PCS’ first delegation to Ukraine we visited Bucha. The memorial in the local church to the massacres was devastating. Seeing the photos and first‑hand accounts leaves no doubt: the Russian army is not liberating anyone — it is an occupying force.
On 4th anniversary of the liberation of Bucha, when the world saw* the horror of Russian occupation, please watch this documentary on life after occupation: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
*and promptly forgot
The future will be electric. Storage, charged with renewable electricity will allow the sun to shine at night & the wind to blow on calm days. "Grid batteries reach stunning new peak of 44 pct of evening demand in world’s fourth biggest economy" 🧪🔌💡☀️💨💧🔋 reneweconomy.com.au/grid-batteri...
We’re at a similar crossroads today. Choose a real dash for renewables, or double down on North Sea oil and gas. One path leads to long‑term security. The other leaves the UK exposed to global energy prices and geopolitical shocks. The choice should be obvious.
The “Dash for Gas” in the 90s saw UK electricity production shift from coal to gas. But imagine if we’d dashed for renewables instead. Decades of investment in wind, solar and hydro could have given us cheaper bills, true energy independence, and no reliance on volatile gas markets.
What’s really happening is an attempt to use a populist slogan to undermine net zero and justify expanding oil and gas extraction. It’s a political trick: wrap fossil‑fuel expansion in the language of ‘security’ to delay climate action and lock in decades more emissions.
If calls for “more UK gas” were really about energy security, we’d hear demands to reserve North Sea gas for UK consumers, break the link with global market prices, and bring production and pricing under public control. But we don’t — because that’s not the real agenda.
A far better path to real energy security is investing in renewables, strengthening the grid, and accelerating the shift to heat pumps and EVs. These measures directly reduce our dependence on gas and deliver benefits much sooner than new fossil‑fuel projects ever could.
The North Sea gas fields are mature, and output has been declining for years. Production cannot be rapidly increased, yet this point is never made by the media. Any new investment in gas production will take years before producing any meaningful output.
But here’s the problem: gas is traded on global markets and doesn’t have a nationality. Increasing production just means it can be sold abroad—so it doesn’t automatically improve this country’s energy security.
