Bill English

Wellington, April 15 NZPA - Unions and Amnesty International have raised concerns about the private sector getting involved in running prisons and building schools.

Today Infrastructure Minister Bill English confirmed that a primary school could be the next public institution built under a public private partnership (PPP),

He was commenting the day after the Government announced a new prison in Wiri, South Auckland was planned to be built and run through PPP.

The new school would be built on crown land but would be owned by the private company which would rent it back to the Board of Trustees.

Mr English said such an arrangement would give the Government an opportunity to be less concerned with details of how the school was built and to focus on what kind of building and education was wanted.

"We'll go through the same process with that as with the prisons where you have a pretty thorough look at it, you compare it to efficient public sector procurement of it and that gives you a benchmark ... any kind of PPP would have to do better than (that benchmark).

"Then eventually you go to the market to see if you can actually get something that's better."

There were around 3000 schools in New Zealand and it would be a "worthwhile experiment" to allow one where the people who built the school were responsible for its operation, Mr English said.

Council of Trade Unions economist Bill Rosenberg said that overseas experience showed that PPPs were a recipe for profiteering, higher costs to the taxpayer and loss of control for school principals.

Mr English said PPPs would always be a "small proportion" of the Government's new capital investment, "let alone" its total capital investment.

"It's something that we feel we can learn a lot from some of the things the private sector does so we can apply those techniques across all the assets that the taxpayer owns."

Mr English and Corrections Minister Judith Collins said yesterday the 1000-bed male prison at Wiri could be built more cheaply than a conventional prison and save between 10 and 20 percent in running costs over the 25 to 35-year life of the project.

They hoped the prison would be open by 2014.

Amnesty International chief executive in New Zealand, Patrick Holmes, condemned the private sector running prisons saying it made a mockery of New Zealand's international human rights obligations.

"Privatising prisons significantly reduces the Government's ability to ensure prisoners are afforded and appropriate standard of care and human rights are observed. Moreover, if violation of prisoners' human rights do occur, those responsible must be held to account," Mr Holmes said.