Private Finance Initiative

I was just coming on to that exact point. Clarity would be welcome as to what falls under his remit. Turning to management, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South made a point about disparities. One disparity is that, to take as an example Innisfree, that firm has consolidated 24 hospital PFIs with one provider, while 36% of hospitals have fewer than one full-time equivalent person managing PFI contracts, and 12% have no one managing them at all. There is disparity in how contracts are being negotiated and managed, and even a good contract will be ineffective and poor value for money if it is not effectively managed. In the Treasury minute it says that the Romford pilot, which health officials set great store by, will ““hopefully”” provide data that trusts can use, but there is no scope to enforce that, and no requirement for an increase in the amount of data being asked for. Again, we hear that there is a potential solution, but that solution is not enforceable, the amount of data required will not be increased and there is no transparency in the expertise at the centre. The Department of Health has only four people providing PFI expertise, and the Public Accounts Committee will hopefully get a note from Treasury officials clarifying that. Finally, in the secondary market there is a problem with regulatory arbitrage, with different treatment of insurers and banks in their access to the market. It is important that the Treasury arm that deals with regulation is joined up with the arm that deals with finance. On the refinancing taskforce, the acknowledgment that life insurance and pension funds are important alternative sources of finance is not clear in the February 2011 minute. It also states that"““the refinancing task force will act on this recommendation””." That is very welcome, but how will it do it, and by what date? How will the House get scrutiny of that? Perhaps the Minister can touch on these areas in her closing remarks. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) for the work that he has done in this campaign, and for the formidable way in which he has taken it forward.