Rather than provide evidence of PFI's relative cost-effectiveness, the government (and other PFI advocates) have attempted to focus the debate on the issue of post-contractual cost and time overruns. However this establishes an evaluative framework that is certain to favour PFI over other procurement forms since this is what PFI is specifically designed to achieve (Hellowell and Pollock 2009).
The question that is obscured by focusing on post-contractual cost and time certainty is whether the alleged increase in certainty is worth the premium that is paid for it. For example, the public sector may be able to go to an insurance company and insure itself against any cost and time overruns in conventionally funded projects-but it should not be willing to do so at any price. The implication that cost and time overruns ought to be the overall arbiter of cost-effectiveness is spurious. In addition to the discussion of cost-effectiveness, one might consider whether what is being procured under PFI is what would best serve the public interest-in other words, one might look at allocative efficiency as well as productive efficiency.