Government inheriting poor value assets due to bad handling of PFI contracts, watchdog says
Bad management of private finance contracts is leading to poor quality assets being handed back to the government, including schools and hospitals, according to parliament’s spending watchdog.Its report into the use of private finance initiatives (PFI) for infrastructure comes at a time when the government has identified private investment in projects such as power plants and transport outside London as a key part of its growth agenda.However, the public accounts committee (PAC) is warning that a series of problems with PFI deals could put the government’s ambitions to attract investors for such schemes “in jeopardy”.Setting out a series of recommendations to ministers, MPs on the committee said that UK infrastructure risked becoming “stony ground” for investors unless major changes were made.PFI took off under Tony Blair’s government, which saw it as a way of building key public projects without adding to the national debt.
However, these deals have long been controversial, and not have always been seen to provide value for money to taxpayers.More than 650 public sector organisations have their buildings, IT and essential infrastructure managed by a private consortium under a PFI deal, and state bodies are set to pay £136bn in unitary charges for these contracts until 2052-3.Half of the contracts – covering hospitals, schools and transport – are set to expire during the next decade.The PAC report called on ministers to ensure such contracts were carefully managed so that private sector firms complied with their contractual obligations and “only quality assets are handed back” to government.Last year a report by the Association of Infrastructure Investors in Public Private Partnerships warned that schools and hospitals that depend on PFI contracts were in danger of “severe disruption” unless they could find a way to cope once those contracts expire.
MPs on the PAC are also calling for a more comprehensive framework for how risk is shared between the public and private sector when they work in partnership, particularly after the high-profile collapse of the outsourcing company Carillion, which halted work on new hospitals in Liverpool and Birmingham,The government also needs to provide detailed information on the pipeline of future projects in order to attract new investors, according to the PAC, amid a current lack of data about the past performance of projects or when future ones will be delivered,“Our scrutiny has found a woefully obscured picture for any seeking to invest in big infrastructure projects in the UK, with a corresponding drain of skills overseas,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the PAC,“Without a long-term, consistent pipeline giving an idea of what to expect in years to come, UK infrastructure risks becoming stony ground for any investor,”The PAC is calling on the Treasury to identify which financing models it would support for money for different types of projects, such as energy, transport or communication, to attract investors and drive competition.
A central database covering private finance for infrastructure investment should be published, according to the report, to help the Treasury to deliver value for money, given the huge amounts of money involved in such projects, such as the £14.2bn pledged by the government for the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk.
Microdosing: how ‘off-label’ use of weight loss jabs is spreading from US to UK
A slim woman standing in a kitchen injects herself in the abdomen. Another jogs. A third kneels on a yoga mat drinking water. The shots are intercut with a doctor telling the viewer: “Usually it’s for people who don’t actually have that much to lose – it’s a bit of a gentler way to get to your target weight.”The promotional video is from a private clinic in Leicester offering “microdosing”, the latest trend in the weight loss jab revolution
Thames Water spent £136m on securing emergency funding, leaked document suggests
Thames Water spent at least £136m on the effort to secure emergency funding over 12 months, according to a leaked document that suggests costs outstripped the £130m the struggling utility paid in fines.The law firms Linklaters and Akin Gump received £45m and £26m respectively during the financial year to March 2025, and another 10 firms were paid more than £1m, according to a document listing “atypical expenditure” for the year, seen by the Guardian. It is the first time the fees paid by Thames Water have been detailed publicly.The water company scrambled in the last year to secure emergency funding to avoid temporary nationalisation as it struggled under a £20bn debt pile. That effort led to a court showdown in January and February to force losses on some debt holders in exchange for up to £3bn of rescue cash to see it through this year
AI-generated child sexual abuse videos surging online, watchdog says
The number of videos online of child sexual abuse generated by artificial intelligence has surged as paedophiles have pounced on developments in the technology.The Internet Watch Foundation said AI videos of abuse had “crossed the threshold” of being near-indistinguishable from “real imagery” and had sharply increased in prevalence online this year.In the first six months of 2025, the UK-based internet safety watchdog verified 1,286 AI-made videos with child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that broke the law, compared with two in the same period last year.The IWF said just over 1,000 of the videos featured category A abuse, the classification for the most severe type of material.The organisation said the multibillion-dollar investment spree in AI was producing widely available video-generation models that were being manipulated by paedophiles
Children limiting own smartphone use to manage mental health, survey finds
Children are increasingly taking breaks from their smartphones to better manage their mental health, personal safety and concentration spans, research has revealed.They are reacting to growing concerns that spending too much time online can be harmful by taking control of their own social media and smartphone use rather than relying on parents to enforce limits, according to experts.The number of 12- to 15-year-olds who take breaks from smartphones, computers and iPads rose by 18% to 40% since 2022, according to the audience research company GWI, drawing on a survey of 20,000 young people and their parents across 18 countries.Prof Sonia Livingstone, the director of the LSE’s Digital Futures for Children centre, said these findings were echoed in soon to be published research, which has found that children and young people are trying various options to manage how their online lives affect their wellbeing, including taking a break from social media, distracting themselves from negativity online, seeking more positive experiences on the internet and in some cases quitting social media altogether.Livingstone said: “Children have got the message – from their parents, the media, their own experiences – that too much social media isn’t always good for them
Anisimova endures a hot Wimbledon nightmare after entering the Swiatek bakery | Jonathan Liew
This is what a scream with no vowels sounds like. This is the weight of the soul leaving the body. The arms are no longer connected to the legs, the legs have been severed from the lungs, the lungs have lost contact with the heart and the heart is getting ghosted by the brain. Amanda Anisimova sits on her chair, baking in the heat, stewing in sadness. She dabs her face with a towel and hopes people won’t notice she’s wiping away tears
Ball bother is dominating the India series but the Dukes is not the problem | Barney Ronay
And so it came to pass, an hour into the third day’s play, the first sight of Umpire Paul Reiffel fiddling with his ring-piece, brandishing his ball handcuffs and spending five minutes of an extended towel and chill break worrying about gauge, swelling and improper engorgement.Ball anxiety has been a frustratingly prominent feature of the England-India Test summer. Has any other series been so defined by concerns over the ball? Not chicanery or tampering, but complaints, bitching and even punishable dissent over its general condition and the possible need to change it?This has been the backbeat to summer, rather than Bazball, friction between the teams (we miss you Virat) or even old favourites such as the death of Test cricket or the undue influence of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The visitors seem most bothered, with Rishabh Pant by far the most vocal critic of the Dukes ball, regularly appalled by its performance, fined for hurling it to the ground at Headingley, and even moved to return to the subject before this Test.India got the ball changed twice on the second day here, but only after a lot of chat and frowning consultation of the silver bracelets
Zak Crawley stokes flames and sparks India’s fury in tetchy heatwave Test | Andy Bull
Stokes conjures England magic to halt India and put third Test on knife-edge
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Wimbledon 2025: Swiatek wins title after crushing Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 – as it happened
Iga Swiatek races to first Wimbledon title with 6-0, 6-0 thrashing of Anisimova