Over the past 15 years, the infrastructure sector has boomed. It provided capital first for public-sector projects in the UK such as schools, roads and hospitals, then for such projects overseas, and subsequently for private-sector projects that came with low-risk and long-term cash flows.
In the early days, the politicians welcomed a structure that resulted in projects being completed on time and on budget at an overall cost far less than the public sector had been able to manage. But in time, they became resentful at being made a fool of by the scale of profits produced by private finance initiatives (PFIs). PFIs were restructured as public-private partnerships (PPPs) and then stopped. The result of a return to public-sector procurement has been the disaster of HS2.
The sector expanded with the first
