1,000 signatures reached
To: The new Scottish Government and all major public authorities
Edinburgh Schools Scandal: Open The Books on all PFI/PPP Contracts
We are calling on the Scottish Government and all major public authorities to open the books on all PFI and PPP contracts in Scotland and release all legal and financial advice behind them.
Why is this important?
The first step in challenging the toxic PFI/PPP contracts in Scotland is to end the secrecy and open them up to full public transparency.
With full transparency, all of the facts will be public so that we can pursue:
• Re-negotiation of the expensive debt repayments for PFI/PPP contracts
• The freezing of any further public-private partnerships until a full inquiry has taken place into PFI/PPP
Since the collapse of a wall at Oxgangs Primary School, 17 schools in Edinburgh have been closed to save children's lives from being placed at risk.
The construction of these schools under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) contracts allowed private companies to declare their own buildings safe while extracting Billions from the public purse in debt repayments.
Yet there is an enormous lack of transparency over the correspondence between public authorities and these companies and the contracts they signed.
The cost of debt repayments on PFI/PPP contracts is still rising and public-private contracts (including the new NPD model) are still being signed up to despite fears over the quality of buildings and the extortionate cost.
We call on all parties and leaders standing for the Scottish Parliament to support four keys steps to open the books on public-private contracts:
1) Secure the release of the full contracts and correspondence between all Scottish public authorities and PFI/PPP companies, even when public authorities are not legally obliged to do so, so the public can judge for themselves what went wrong.
2) Secure the release of the legal and financial advice which underpinned the decisions by public bodies to enter into PFI/PPP contracts, including whether they took this advice from public or private consultancies.
3) Pursue debt renegotiation for PFI/PPP in all cases of misconduct and where contractual obligations have not been fully met or standards have been breached.
4) Freeze all further public-private partnership contracts until the causes of the Edinburgh schools scandal have been determined in full, and until a full inquiry has taken place into the financial and quality implications of the PPP model for public service delivery.
With full transparency, all of the facts will be public so that we can pursue:
• Re-negotiation of the expensive debt repayments for PFI/PPP contracts
• The freezing of any further public-private partnerships until a full inquiry has taken place into PFI/PPP
Since the collapse of a wall at Oxgangs Primary School, 17 schools in Edinburgh have been closed to save children's lives from being placed at risk.
The construction of these schools under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) contracts allowed private companies to declare their own buildings safe while extracting Billions from the public purse in debt repayments.
Yet there is an enormous lack of transparency over the correspondence between public authorities and these companies and the contracts they signed.
The cost of debt repayments on PFI/PPP contracts is still rising and public-private contracts (including the new NPD model) are still being signed up to despite fears over the quality of buildings and the extortionate cost.
We call on all parties and leaders standing for the Scottish Parliament to support four keys steps to open the books on public-private contracts:
1) Secure the release of the full contracts and correspondence between all Scottish public authorities and PFI/PPP companies, even when public authorities are not legally obliged to do so, so the public can judge for themselves what went wrong.
2) Secure the release of the legal and financial advice which underpinned the decisions by public bodies to enter into PFI/PPP contracts, including whether they took this advice from public or private consultancies.
3) Pursue debt renegotiation for PFI/PPP in all cases of misconduct and where contractual obligations have not been fully met or standards have been breached.
4) Freeze all further public-private partnership contracts until the causes of the Edinburgh schools scandal have been determined in full, and until a full inquiry has taken place into the financial and quality implications of the PPP model for public service delivery.
How it will be delivered
We will deliver a copy of the petition to the new Scottish Government after the 5 May Scottish Parliament election as well as all major public authorities in Scotland.
