Everybody's playing it. Photograph: PA
Observer HQ is a pretty desolate place on a Monday, the belated sabbath for Sunday hacks.
Tumbleweed drifts past.
So on the blog we decided to play a fun new game called 'Hunt the PFI'. Anyone can play. You just need an internet connection, some time and an interest in how public money helps private enterprise thrive.
We were inspired by a report on the Today programme this morning that John Laing, a construction company, made pretax profits of 25.1m pounds in 2004, up 18 per cent on the previous year.
Clocks onset of a yawn.
Wait, this is interesting. John Laing is a former housebuilding company that played the public-private partnership market very shrewdly to become a multi-purpose provider of provider of public assets - schools, bridges, that sort of thing. In theory, this is good for everybody. We get a spanking new hospital/prison/government office, the exchequer gets the best deal possible on construction (powered by the legendary efficiency of the private sector) and the company shareholders get a big dividend. That's the magic of PFI.
Now, we may be being a bit thick somwhere here, and we're sure someone will point out where, but doesn't it all go a bit wrong when the private company turns out to be less effective than had been hoped? In the real private sector unsuccessful projects fail. That's the magic of the market. But in the public-private sector, the project might be a hospital or a school, so the government can't just write it off when the costs spin out of control. So the winner of the management company turns to the contract provider - a local council, for example - and says: 'You know we said we'd build that hospital for 10p. Well, it turns out that it's going to cost a bit more than that, what with all this snow and rain and Mercury retrograde through Sagittarius. So we're going to need a gazillion pounds instead.' And the council has to cough up.
So how much public money is being spent through PFI schemes, and who are the beneficiaries?
Well, that's where the fun game comes in. Here's how you play:
You go to the Partnerships UK projects database and try to find the most expensive contract that you can. You get extra bonus points if it was awarded to a company with a meaningless, and yet slightly sinister science-fiction-sounding name, such as Serco or Carrillion. So, for example, a quick serach reveals a 146m pound deal to develop and maintain the A13, which was awarded to consortium that includes AMEC; or what about this 345m pound contract to redevelop the main Ministry of Defence building that went to a consortium called Modus Services plc.
You can invent your own rules. Double points for the involvement of a privatised utility? Triple points for the involvement of Halliburton?
Next week: PFI bingo, where you scan company websites and pick up points for the most absurd use of the word 'solutions', as in 'we are a leading provider of education solutions' instead of 'we build schools'.
Endless fun.
