Allyson Pollock

Allyson Pollock is professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary, University of London. She was previously director of the Centre for International Public Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh and prior to that was head of the Public Health Policy Unit at University College London and director of research and development at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is known for her research into, and opposition to, part privatisation of the UK National Health Service (NHS) via the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and other mechanisms.

Work on PFI

Allyson Pollock has provided evidence^[1][2] to the British Parliament and the Welsh National Assembly regarding PFI. Under her directorship CIPHP provided evidence^[3] to the Scottish Parliament regarding PFI.

In their statements of evidence, Allyson Pollock and her co-researcher Mark Hellowell argue that capital investment through PFI creates a large public sector cash liability. For example, they claim that the £5.2bn of PFI investment in Scotland has created a public sector cash liability of £22.3bn.^[3] This cash liability is 'off balance-sheet' and does not show up on government statistics such as the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR).

Pollock and Hellowell also claim that, although the UK government's support for PFI is based on its supposed ability to deliver good value for money, the mechanisms for testing this are skewed.^[3] While developing PFI proposals, contracting authorities such as NHS trusts are required to construct a theoretical alternative to the use of PFI, which compares the value for money offered by a public versus a private finance scheme. The publicly funded alternative is called a 'public sector comparator'. In theory, if this exercise concludes that PFI does not represent good value for money compared to public finance, then the latter should be used for the procurement. However, in practice this rarely happens.

The reasons for this are discussed in a paper^[4] co-authored by Pollock and published in the British Medical Journal. Pollock et al. conclude that the true risks of many privately financed contracts are not calculated correctly. They argue that the system involves a high degree of subjectivity regarding the value of the risk being transferred to the private sector. They take one example of an NHS project in which one of the risks theoretically being transferred was that the target for clinical cost savings would not be met. The cost of this risk was estimated at £5m. However, in practice the private consortium had no responsibility for ensuring that there would actually be clinical cost-savings, and faced no penalty if there were none. The paper concludes therefore that the risk transfer was "spurious".

Jeremy Colman, former deputy general of the National Audit Office and the current Auditor General for Wales has supported Pollock's findings. In a Financial Times article^[5] he is quoted as saying that many PFI appraisals suffer from "spurious precision" and others are based on "pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo". Some, he says, are simply "utter rubbish". He noted the pressures on contracting authorities to weight their appraisal in favour of taking their projects down the PFI route: "If the answer comes out wrong you don't get your project. So the answer doesn't come out wrong very often."

References

Publications (selection)

• Gaffney, D.; Pollock, Allyson M.; Price, D.; Shaoul, J. (1999), "NHS Capital Expenditure and the Private Finance Initiative", British Medical Journal 319 
• Gaffney, D.; Pollock, Allyson M.; Price, D.; Shaoul, J. (1999), "PFI in the NHS: is there an economic case?", British Medical Journal 319 
• House of Commons, Treasury Committee (2000), The Private Finance Initiative: Minutes of Evidence, Tuesday 11 January 2000 - Prof.Stephen Glaister; Mr.Tony Travers; Ms.Rosemary Scanlon; Prof.Allyson Pollock (House of Commons Papers), Stationery Office Books, ISBN 978-0-10-212600-6 
• Pollock, Allyson; Shaoul, Rowland, Player (2001), Public Services and the Private Sector: A Response to the IPPR (Catalyst Working Papers), Catalyst Press, ISBN 978-0-9533224-7-3 
• Pollock, Allyson M. (2005), NHS Plc: The Privatisation of Our Health Care, Verso Books, ISBN 978-1-84467-539-5 
• Pollock, Allyson M.; Talbot-Smith (2006), The New NHS: A Guide: A Guide to Its Funding, Organisation and Accountability, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-32841-8 
• Hellowell, Mark; Pollock, Allyson M. (2007), The PFI: Scotland's Plan for Expansion and its Implications, University of Edinburgh, http://www.health.ed.ac.uk/CIPHP/Documents/PFIScotlandsPlanforExpansion_hellowell_pollock_pmm_002.pdf 
• Hellowell, Mark; Pollock, Allyson M. (2007), Written Evidence to the National Assembly for Wales Finance Committee with Regards to its Inquiry on Public Private Partnerships, University of Edinburgh, http://www.health.ed.ac.uk/CIPHP/Documents/EvidencetoWelshFinanceCommittee_Dec2007_000.pdf 

External links

• Allyson Pollock homepage
• Pollock, Allyson (May 10, 2005), "Healthy Sceptic", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/may/10/privatefinance.interviews 
• Pollock, Allyson (March 24, 2006), "A Clean Bill for Health", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/mar/24/regainingthevaluesofthenh 
• Pollock, Allyson (April 11, 2007), "A Gauntlet for Brown", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/11/comment.economy 
• Pollock, Allyson (October 4, 2007), "The New Profiteers", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/04/thenewprofiteers 
• Pollock, Allyson (April, 2008), "We Have To Tackle Child Injury On The Sports Field", The Herald, http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2185572.0.we_have_to_tackle_child_injury_on_the_sports_field.php 
• Pollock, Allyson (June 11, 2008), "Operating Profits", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/11/nhs.health1 
• Pollock, Allyson (July 1, 2008), "Farewell to a Free NHS", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/01/nhs.health1 
• Pollock, Allyson (September 12, 2008), "Out-of-Hours GP Battle That We Simply Must Win", The Herald, http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2445242.0.outofhours_gp_battle_that_we_simply_must_win.php 
• Pollock, Allyson (September 25, 2008), "Tayside Health Board Do Not Care About Kinloch Rannoch", The Herald, http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2452065.0.tayside_health_board_do_not_care_about_kinloch_rannoch.php 
• Hellowell, Mark (2007), Written evidence to the Finance Committee of the Scottish Parliament with regards to its inquiry into the funding of capital investment, University of Edinburgh, http://www.health.ed.ac.uk/CIPHP/Documents/ScottishFinanceCommittee.pdf