As we have seen, a major reason for the attraction of PFI to the Labour government has been to increase investment in the NHS while at the same time preventing the PSND/GNP percentage rising above 40. Considerably less than half of the debt of the PFI projects is reported to be included in PSND. For more than a half, the public sector is not deemed to be at risk.
The 40% target was an unnecessarily low target comparing with the Maastricht treaty target of 60% and actual debt/GNP percentages of more than 60% for France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA. Of course, such a target has, in the context of the financial and economic crisis of 2008 onwards, now been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Thus a major motive behind a wasteful expansion of PFI projects in not just the health but other sectors as well has been rendered totally irrelevant by the sharp rise in debt as a result of the economic crisis. Thus the PFI, an initiative of microeconomic stupidity, was justified by a debt target which was unnecessarily low a debt target now rendered irrelevant by a macroeconomic crisis brought about by the same incompetent government.