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Private Finance Initiative

Volume 455: debated on Tuesday 9 January 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what the total capital value is of each private finance initiative scheme overseen by his Department which has reached financial close; over what period repayments will take place; and what the total cost of repayment will be. (103522)

The Northern Ireland Office only has one commitment under PFI contract—the Causeway Programme.

Causeway is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between Fujitsu Services and the Northern Ireland Office to provide managed services related to the electronic sharing of information across the criminal justice organisations in Northern Ireland. The programme is implementing a number of services in a number of phases.

The total capital value of the Causeway scheme (as per NIO Resource Accounts 2005-06) is approximately £9.3 million. This capital value is estimated by independent consultants.

Repayments will take place over the length of the contract, i.e. 10 years with effect from 28 August 2003. The cost of these repayments, known as unitary charge payments, is approximately £23.9 million. Unitary charge payments are made for services provided and the annual payment increases as services are made available. The figure quoted is a projection; payments will be affected by the supplier performance and annual indexation (from March 2006). The contract also includes a small number of milestone payments with a total value of £3.4 million.

A list of all signed private finance initiative deals, with capital values, can be found on the HM Treasury website, available at:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/documents/public_ private_partnership/ppp_pfi_stats.cfm

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what (a) public-private partnerships and (b) private finance initiative contracts have been entered into by his Department; what assets were transferred to the private sector as part of each deal; what the value of these assets was; what the total cost is of each contract; and what estimate was made of the cost to his Department of traditional procurement over the life of each contract. (109343)

The Northern Ireland Office only has one commitment under PPP/PFI contract—the Causeway Programme.

Causeway is a public-private partnership (PPP) between Fujitsu Services and the Northern Ireland Office to provide managed services related to the electronic sharing of information across the criminal justice organisations in Northern Ireland. The programme is implementing a number of services in a number of phases.

No assets were transferred to the private sector as part of the deal.

Total cost of the contract is £27 million.

Traditional procurement cost is £38 million.