2.30 Private finance was a new way of procuring services. The Treasury drew up new standard contractual forms and procurement procedures to draw on lessons from the early PFI contracts. Such steps were not intrinsic to the use of private finance. But standardisation enabled private finance contracts to achieve greater consistency in best practice.
2.31 The Treasury published its first guide to standardised commercial contracts In 1999,32 revising it in 2002, 2004 and 2007. It aims to reduce the scope, time and costs of negotiations while tendering; to promote a better understanding of the risks associated to PFI projects; and to promote consistency in Government procurement. The NAO worked closely with the Treasury to ensure that the lessons from our work were reflected in the standardised contracts.
2.32 The Treasury and Partnerships UK have rigorously enforced the use of the standardised contracts, monitoring any deviations and retaining a veto on any major changes from standard form. This has ensured that previous contractual errors have been reduced. We now very rarely see the same contractual problems that we saw in the early contracts.
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32 Standardisation of PFI contracts, HMT (1999).