That's another fine mess you've got us in to

Yet another story of long foreseen disaster that the goverment did nothing about and now the tax payer is likely to pick up the bill.  Metronet, the failing infrastructure company that is responsible for maintenance on all but three of the London Underground's lines is heading for liquidation.  Now, when the tube was taken over by TfL, Mayor Ken was dead against the  Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative that was forced upon TfL by Gordon Brown.  The whole point behind the PPP and PFI deals was that to get private companies involved in the delivery of public projects as they (quite rightly) were deemed better at delivering them.  The private company takes on the risk (and benefits of course) which should therefore mean the tax payer is free from having to pay out if it all goes wrong.  So why are we now faced with the prospect of bailing out Metronet?

The problem is, the government has seen PPP/PFI as the solution to all our problems when in fact it is not.  It may well work for the building of a prison but that does not necassarily mean that it will work for transport.  To make matters worse, who is getting the bum deal here if one the one side you have a company that picks up a huge contract, gets an asset and government payments for up to 30 years and on the other side, if it all goes wrong the private company/consortium can simply up sticks and leave the problem to the taxpayer.  The theory that the risk rests on the private firm is a myth and now, as Ken has always said, we will pick up the bill - all £1.9bn of it.  Meanwhile, the firms that make up the Metronet consortium can pick themselves up, dust themselves off and have a jolly good laugh at how they got away with it all.