Edinburgh schools: Is it the fault of PFIs?
Fears over safety has forced the closure of 17 Edinburgh schools leaving 7,000 pupils unable to return to classrooms following the Easter break. Ten primaries, five secondaries and two additional support needs schools have been shut due to concern over the standard of construction. They were all built under the same public private partnership contract and Scotland's largest teaching union, the EIS, which has called for a review of all PPP and similar private finance initiative (PFI) deals, questioning how such significant faults could escape building control scrutiny. We brought together Tony Travers, visiting professor in the LSE's Government Department, and Stella Creasey, a Labour MP who sat on the Public Accounts Committee during their review of Private Finance Initiatives, to discuss this challenge to PFIs. (Image: Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh. Credit: PA)