The report said PFI did not cut hospital stays

Scottish Labour leader Jack McConnell has been challenged to apologise to two academics after rubbishing a report which criticised private cash being used to fund NHS hospitals.

Scottish National Party leader John Swinney said the researchers, Dr Matthew Dunnigan and Allyson Pollock, were highly respected.

He demanded that Mr McConnell say sorry to them after attacking their findings about Edinburgh's new infirmary.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Pollock, of the School of Public Policy at University College London, and Mr Dunnigan, of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, said their analysis showed evidence of "reduced service delivery across Lothian and its associated Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) development compared with other Scottish hospitals".

The study also found that PFI did not meet targets to cut in-patient and day case admissions and length of hospital stays.

But Mr McConnell dismissed the report.

Hip replacements

He said: "Those academics who try and create a false argument about the way that the hospital was originally financed are very wrong indeed.

"The doctors and nurses in the Lothian health service have worked very hard to improve the health service in the last few years, and they deserve our support, not that sort of criticism and attack.

"There are people being treated there getting hip replacements in three or four days, a situation that would take taken three or four weeks four or five years ago."

We have actively encouraged - both at local and national level - the use of not-for-profit-trusts Ross Finnie, Scottish Lib Dems

However, Mr Swinney said the report "clearly demonstrated" that PFI "costs beds" and leaves patients suffering on waiting lists as a result.

"Jack McConnell now owes Matthew Dunnigan and Allyson Pollock an apology," he added.

The report looked at trends in bed capacity, in-patient and day case admissions in Lothian in the first five years of the PFI plan for the new infirmary.

It set out to establish whether there was a "PFI effect" by comparing clinical activity and performance in Lothian with the rest of Scotland.

It found that by 2000-01, 81% of the planned bed cuts for Lothian had been achieved, but a projected 21% increase in in-patient and day case admissions to all acute specialities only reached 0.3%.

Colin Fox, of the Scottish Socialist Party, said the report vindicated his party's anti-PFI stance.

He said: "This represents a torpedo below the water line of the PFI at the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary."

Matthew Dunnigan: Co-author

Tam Waterson, convener at the hospital of public service union Unison, said: "We need to push for a full public inquiry into the whole debacle."

The Liberal Democrats said there was nothing "inherently wrong" with PFI schemes but they were not "the only game in town".

Ross Finnie said: "We have actively encouraged - both at local and national level - the use of not-for-profit-trusts."

But Tory health spokeswoman Mary Scanlon said the report was "deeply flawed" and had been criticised by Lothian NHS Trust.

She said: "There is no doubt that PFI allowed this state of the art facility, and many others to be built on time and within budget and to the betterment of NHS patients in Scotland."