24 August 2001
They will try to embarrass ministers over the costs of financing high-profile projects through private resources rather than the public purse, including the public-private partnership for the London Underground.
A sustained series of attacks, which the LibDems say will begin within the next few weeks, will concentrate on allegations that the Treasury has 'skewed' the Public Sector Comparator so that more schemes take the PFI route.
This is the mechanism used to determine whether a project is more efficiently funded through public funds or by bringing in private business and has already been the source of great controversy. Education, health and transport PFI projects will also be targeted.
The LibDem assault will help pave the way for a new wave of criticism of the PFI in the run-up to a potentially explosive party conference season.
Delegates at the TUC Congress, starting in Brighton on September 10, will also take up the assault on PFI. A list of motions on the issue has been put on the agenda, principally by the public service unions Unison and the GMB.
Labour's conference, at the end of the same month, also looks likely to provide a focus for opponents of PFI.
Although they claim they are not 'anti-PFI', the LibDems feel the government is vulnerable to attacks on policy in this area. This week they published research showing a number of contracts have been broken by businesses unable to meet work deadlines.
Nearly all of the PFI trunk road schemes in England, claim the LibDems, have been subject to penalties for contractors unable to carry out work on time.
The party is now calling for stiffer penalties to be put into place. They also criticised the culture of secrecy in Whitehall that makes it hard to get the true financial picture about PFI.
A series of Parliamentary questions tabled by the party before the summer recess had yielded responses from only eight departments.
'If the government wants to pursue private finance it has to improve the process and it certainly has to be more open and accountable,' said the LibDem Treasury spokesman, Matthew Taylor.
The PPP Forum, which represents contractors involved in private finance projects, criticised the LibDems' research. 'We are actually trying to have a debate about PPP. They are being sensationalist,' said Cathy McGlynn, director of the PPP Forum. She also claimed their figures on penalties 'didn't make sense' and were incomplete.
The government this week announced a further five multimillion pound PFI schemes, including new fire and ambulance stations in Dorset and new police headquarters in Wiltshire.
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