The HSJ reported last week that the consortium designated as 'preferred bidder for the UHL PFI project has decided to sue the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust [1] over the scrapping of the £921m scheme.

The UHL obviously are being cautious about saying anything. I hope UNISON shows no such qualms.

This decision should announce the death knell of PFI. The building firms' case essentially amounts to saying that once they were designated as preferred bidder the hospital was contractually obliged to proceed with the plans, even though the builders could put the costs up as much as they liked, and the plans had already been slashed to make them (ahem) affordable by the NHS in Leicestershire. The DH and the UHL finally realised the project was "no longer value for money" and pulled the plug in July 2007. Had the project gone ahead, the local NHS would have been desperately overstretched and the consortium would have been quids-in. Because the builders raised their prices just once too often, they now want compensation for their missed chance at the gravy train. Arrogance, ignorance and greed [2] indeed. That's capitalism for you, and further demonstration, should one be needed, of why finance capitalism is a very poor tool for building healthcare systems.

I can't find any advocate of PFI now prepared to comment on the alleged benefits of PFI in "transferring risk to the private sector", which was the defence they hid behind in previous debates about PFI, when critics had demonstrated conclusively that it was an inflexible and expensive mechanism for public building projects.

You've got to love the statement from Triskelion reported in the HSJ article, that they had "been attempting to respolve this issue for more than two years and has regrettably been left with no other option than to seek redress through the courts" which translates as "we've been demanding money with menaces but that hasn't worked, so now we're employing some lawyers to do it for us".

What will be interesting within the UHL is how the decision to sue affects the relationship between the UHL and Serco, providers of 'Facilities Management' services and employers of over 700 staff at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, and one of the three partners in Triskelion. Facilities Management contracts at UHL have been overdue for renegotiation for years, with the excuse always being that the PFI project would overtake all the existing contracts. It can't be put off forever, and I can't see any possible Serco bid for the work being helped by the fact that they're part of an attempt to bleed the UHL out of £20million to pad the pockets of fat-cat building firms. UNISON has argued for years that the solution to all this mess is to scrap the contracts and bring all the facilities management staff - porters, cleaners, domestics and so - directly back under UHL employ, thus cutting out the management costs inevitably incurred with contracting out. We can only hope that this souring of relations between the UHL and its largest contractor makes that a little more likely.