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Finance Bill

Of course, if one changes the accounting rules and puts on extra deficits, the deficit will be bigger. In 1997, the Conservative deficit would have been a bit bigger than the one that the Minister quoted, but this Government’s deficit would be massively bigger because, over the following 10 years, there has been a huge surge in pension and PFI liabilities. One reason why it now matters much more that PFI liabilities are not properly accounted for is that their quality has deteriorated. Under the Conservative Administration, when there were not many PFIs, there was a much greater attempt to ensure that there was a genuine transfer of risk to the private sector so that, if the scheme went wrong, the private sector, not the public sector, had to pick up the bill. I do not believe that that is true of the London underground public-private partnership, which constitutes a massively expensive and risky set of arrangements stretching over 30 years. I am not sure that the Government accounts reflect the full consequences of the cost of that scheme.