Labour are constantly bleating these days about jobs in the NHS and teacher numbers. The truth behind the stories, however, reveals Labour's complete and utter hypocrisy.
Labour choose to ignore the impact of their profligate PFI credit card spending on education and health budgets. Figures released in March demonstrated quite clearly that the more Councils have to spend on paying their PFI costs, the less they have in their education budget to spend on teachers.
In Glasgow, PFI payments represent 8.6% of the Education budget for the city - and considering that budget is around £515m, that represents quite a wadge of cash. How many more teachers could be employed for that sum? How many more nursery places could be provided?
I'm not in any way arguing for the closure of schools, but the PFI contracts in Glasgow were so ill-thought out that they have also had the effect of the forced maintaining of secondary schools which have so few pupils that key subjects like history are being dropped. When Primary Schools in the city were described as being 'half empty' plans were brought forward to close them. The Council can't possibly do this for secondaries, as we're still paying for their refurbishment. Primaries and nurseries have been moved into schools to mitigate the effect of this, but in reality, the Council has been tied to the dead weight of the PFI deal and can't do much about it.
Today, I see that Tris has a blog post showing that the NHS are facing a similar problem.
Kenny Gibson MSP puts it well when he says:
Labour choose to ignore the impact of their profligate PFI credit card spending on education and health budgets. Figures released in March demonstrated quite clearly that the more Councils have to spend on paying their PFI costs, the less they have in their education budget to spend on teachers.
In Glasgow, PFI payments represent 8.6% of the Education budget for the city - and considering that budget is around £515m, that represents quite a wadge of cash. How many more teachers could be employed for that sum? How many more nursery places could be provided?
I'm not in any way arguing for the closure of schools, but the PFI contracts in Glasgow were so ill-thought out that they have also had the effect of the forced maintaining of secondary schools which have so few pupils that key subjects like history are being dropped. When Primary Schools in the city were described as being 'half empty' plans were brought forward to close them. The Council can't possibly do this for secondaries, as we're still paying for their refurbishment. Primaries and nurseries have been moved into schools to mitigate the effect of this, but in reality, the Council has been tied to the dead weight of the PFI deal and can't do much about it.
Today, I see that Tris has a blog post showing that the NHS are facing a similar problem.
Kenny Gibson MSP puts it well when he says:
“PFI is typical of Labour’s irresponsible buy now, pay later approach to public spending.
“The NHS will pay more to banks in repayments over the next five years for three hospitals than those hospitals are actually worth. That is an example of the profligacy and incompetence that characterised Labour’s financial management and that Scotland’s public services are now paying for."
“The NHS will pay more to banks in repayments over the next five years for three hospitals than those hospitals are actually worth. That is an example of the profligacy and incompetence that characterised Labour’s financial management and that Scotland’s public services are now paying for."
The really frustrating thing is that we're tied into these contracts. Our health boards, Councils and Government have to pay over the odds for something that we don't want and even warned wouldn't work. We must strive to remind the voters of this truth, whenever Labour trot out lines on cuts. The SNP are fighting to keep jobs in Education and the NHS, despite having to cope with the consequences of Labour's buy now-pay later policies.
