PFI Accounting Mysteries Deepen

“Transparency is totally missing from Kilmarnock private prison contract” says MSP Stewart Stevenson

A Parliamentary answer has revealed that neither the Scottish Executive nor Kilmarnock Prison Services Limited [KPSL] are holding the Kilmarnock prison building asset on their books. Speaking after the Scottish Executive revealed what they describe as an “apparent anomoly”, Banff and Buchan MSP Stewart Stevenson said,

“During my investigations into the Scottish Prison Service Estates Review last year, I raised a number of questions about the PFI used for Kilmarnock Prison. In particular I highlighted that KPSL had claimed in their 1999 accounts to have sold the prison to the Home Office.

“Each time I queried this I was assured that this was an error. The company [KPSL] indicated that the error was that the sale had actually been to the Scottish Office and not to the Home Office. Ministers indicated to the contrary that no such sale had taken place.

“Finally, this Labour-Liberal Executive has had to come clean and admit that there is an accounting muddle of significant proportions at the heart of this PFI contract.

“With the private company denying that they hold the asset that is the prison buildings at Kilmarnock, there is a serious risk that liabilities lie not with KPSL but with the Executive.”

Turning to Parliamentary exchanges between Ministers and the MSP, Stevenson continued,

“It is vital that the review by the Financial Reporting Advisory Board is completed as a matter of urgency. Clarity is vital if the public purse is not pick up unexpected costs at some point in the future.

“Financial fiddle or malicious muddle; either way PFI as an appropriate way for public projects is increasingly discredited. This is another nail in its coffin.”