HOSPITALS with huge debts will still be left struggling under the government’s much-trumpeted plan to pay off NHS debts, a hard-up trust revealed today.

The government has said that as part of its response to the coronavirus crisis, £13.4 billion of NHS hospital debt will be written off.

But debts created by private finance initiatives (PFI) — the rip-off schemes whereby private developers build hospitals paid for by the NHS over decades — are not included in the write-off.

Calderdale & Huddersfield in West Yorkshire is one trust burdened with PFI debt.

In 2000, a new Calderdale Royal Infirmary was built in Halifax at a cost of £64 million. But the trust is paying £700m to developers and property dealers for the hospital. The debt burden is so great that the trust is cutting services, including many at the second major hospital it runs, Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

The trust’s finance director Gary Boothby told the Morning Star: “The [debt] announcement relates to funds trusts have been borrowing from the Department of Health to fund their year-on-year overspend.”

NHS trusts in England will have had to pay £80 billion in PFI debt on £13bn of spending by 2050 when contracts end, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research. 

GMB union national secretary Rehana Azam said: “PFI is a catastrophic waste of taxpayers’ money. Once the shiny veneer comes off, these deals are financial time-bombs that leave public bodies shackled into decades of eye-watering debt.

“The billions funnelled into PFI projects is money that should be spent on patients and children’s education instead.

“It must be the end of the road for PFI: it’s time to properly fund our public services upfront instead.”

Unison head of health Sara Gorton warned that paying for PFI projects was costing trusts “a small fortune” and demanded the government “go the whole hog and relieve the NHS” of all debts.

The Department of Health did not comment.