Finance Bill

I did not avoid the question at all. I pointed out that most PFI contracts were signed under the Labour Government. When I was a Secretary of State, I remember being offered a PFI route to financing a new hospital. I looked at the numbers and did not think they worked, so I said, “I’d rather finance it in the normal way by public borrowing because that would clearly be cheaper and give us more control.” That was a bit of a surprise to my officials but they quite liked the advice I gave them on the subject. It is the job of a Minister to understand these things, but a lot of Labour Ministers did not understand the contracts they were signing, and those contracts had weaknesses. If the hon. Lady has problems with contracts that Ministers are currently signing, it is her job as an Opposition MP—she will not be shy about doing this—to give chapter and verse. She has not been specific, but we do not have time to turn this into a debate about individual contracts. I am sure that my ministerial friends, particularly in the Treasury spending department, would be very interested to hear where she thinks they have gone wrong. However. we probably need to move on.