Panorama

Who's Getting Rich on your Money? (2011x50)

Air date: Nov 28, 2011

As Government spending cuts bite, one group of businessmen know they will keep making vast profits from our taxes while getting us ever deeper into debt. Since 1997 almost every new school and hospital in the UK has been built by private companies who lease them back to the government. But what's in it for the taxpayer? John Ware investigates the inflexible terms and conditions of what has become the government's flexible friend - the Private Finance Initiative - a kind of ministerial credit card which racks up huge public debts without showing on the nation's balance sheet. He uncovers evidence of how government claims that PFI gives taxpayers value for money have been manipulated. And he asks why the coalition government signed so many PFI deals when in opposition both the prime minister and his deputy branded them as 'dodgy accounting'.