Public-private partnerships and the ‘New Labour’ Government in Britain

As an element of the new public management in Britain, public-private partnerships emerged in the early 1990s as a development in the then Conservative Government’s approach to questions of public-sector funding and the quality of public-service provision. The principal policy expression of publicprivate partnership under the Conservative Government was the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), introduced in 1992 (see Terry 1996; Falconer and Ross 1998; Broadbent and Laughlin 1999). The Conservative approach to public-private partnership, as enshrined within the PFI, was principally ideological, fuelled by a belief in the primacy of the private sector over the public sector.