Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 12:32 pm on 4 July 2007.
We will have to deal with Professor Darzi's recommendations when they come up, but we could never have embarked on this huge programme of rebuilding hospitals without PFI. When we came into Government, most of the NHS estate was built before the NHS was created. Now only a fifth of it was there before 1948, and that is because of the biggest hospital building programme ever in this country, and probably one of the biggest in the world. PFI was necessary to ensure that we did that.