Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to relieve the private finance initiative obligations of Barts Healthcare NHS Trust; and if he will make a statement.

This Government is determined to tackle the worst excesses of previous private finance initiative (PFI) deals, and we are currently considering options on how best to take this forward.

As a minimum, we will be helping all National Health Service trusts with PFI contracts, including Barts, to ensure they are implementing high quality contract management to get the most out of their contracts. The Department’s PFI Centre of Best Practice is assessing PFI contracts and supporting trusts in developing their contract management capabilities. This will help achieve better value for money and deliver efficiencies from existing PFI contracts.