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The Conservatives have now questioned the wisdom of using PFI for building new hospitals. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has added to criticism raised last week in TV documentary Dispatches and in the wake of the government announcing six new PFI hospital schemes worth £1.5bn going ahead last Friday.

Lansley claimed PFI-financing had become "too unwieldly a tool for encouraging capital investment in the NHS. It is too long-term, and its costs are too high. It is time for a fundamental reassessment of how NHS organisations access capital for their investment projects. There needs to be greater flexibility in accessing funding and in structuring projects in the future."

The Tories also pointed out that the £1.5bn spending in the six new schemes had been cut by a fifth by the government, down from an original intended budget of £1.8bn.