Prof Allyson Pollock claims that National Health Service bodies are laying off staff, reducing services and providing lower-quality care because they have to spend so much in interest payments on their privately-constructed buildings.
She says the interest repayments on the 101 PFI hospitals built under Labour now total more than £40billion and are increasing even as public spending is being cut back.
It comes after a Daily Telegraph investigation found that some PFI hospitals – built and run by private firms and effectively rented back to the state – will end up costing taxpayers more than 10 times their capital value.
Last week it emerged that a mental health trust has become the first to get out of one of its PFI contracts, and will save an estimated £14million by “paying the mortgage off early”.
In a paper published on Bmj.com, the website of the leading medical journal, Prof Pollock claims that “NHS PFI contracts are not good value and are endangering patient care”.

Only fools thought that they were cost effective.

Fiddling the figures to make certain statistics look good while also lining your own pocket, at the expense of future parliaments? Must have sounded pretty damned "cost effective" to a good few people...