Madam,

The Cambrian News is absolutely right to make the shocking cost of Ysgol Penweddig front page news (‘Taxpayers pay £14,000 per day for school’, 5 October).

But the far-reaching effects of PFIs are even more insidious.

They were first introduced by the Conservatives in 1992 and expanded by successive governments to cover public services as diverse as healthcare, education and military projects. PFIs have been particularly disastrous for NHS hospitals, which owe over £80 billion in PFI loan charges - many times more than the original capital costs.

In 2015 the UK National Audit Office found that investment through PFI schemes more than doubles project costs for the public sector. Yet the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been promoting these schemes globally, including within impoverished countries with a high risk of debt crisis.

How long before these countries’ governments and economies collapse under the strain and we see more uprisings, humanitarian disasters and innocent people forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future? Organisations such as Oxfam, Global Justice Now and the Jubilee Debt Campaign are working hard to highlight how costly and damaging these schemes are, not only to us in the UK, but also globally - and I urge our council and elected representatives to play no part in furthering the PFI deceit.

Yours etc,

Dr A J Polkey, Swyddffynnon.

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