TWO tickets to Burnley Reserves is my usual prize for the current answer to a quiz question. So here's the question.

In the good old days like the 1970s and 80s, where did the money come from for big public sector building projects - like, for example, a new £100million plus hospital for Blackburn and East Lancashire?

There's a second question (for tickets to Burnley Reserves). Who paid if the building was not up to scratch?

As it happens, I regard two minutes at Burnley Reserves, let alone two hours, as being a cruel, unusual punishment, almost certainly banned under the Human Rights Act.

So let me spare any readers who like to show they are right and give the answers myself.

Here they are. Money from the local council or the Treasury to build places like schools, roads and hospitals does not arrive from heaven.

It comes from private individuals and companies by way of taxation, or typically in the case of large capital projects, from the government borrowing from the private sector.

That's not free either. The use of the money borrowed has itself to be paid for through interest charges, which in turn have to be paid from taxation (including council tax).

I have a set of files well over a foot thick of correspondence going back to Barbara Castle's days (and she finished in 1979) about the need for a new district hospital for East Lancashire. The case was an unarguable one.

Blackburn Royal Infirmary was in Victorian buildings on a contained site, and it was fair neither on the patients nor staff for care to be split between Blackburn Royal Infirmary and Queen's Park.

We needed a new hospital on a single site with modern equipment and facilities.

The 1974-79 Labour Government recognised the need (Barbara Castle after all was Health Secretary for two years), but the Treasury's answer was no.

The 1979 - 97 Conservative governments were even more forthcoming with sympathy and understanding, but repeated requests, petitions and Commons' debates all received the same answer - there's no money.

Capital monies from this traditional route have always been tight.

When we got into government in 1997 my top local priority was the new hospital.

Then Health Secretary Frank Dobson said yes, but it had to be via the "Private Finance Initiative" (PFI). I agreed with him.

The hospital is now built and operational and contributing to the very much higher standards of health care than there were 10 years ago.

PFI isn't perfect. But nor is it a "debacle" as Don Rishton (letters June 1) claims.

Yes, the PFI companies have to be paid - so do the money lenders if the traditional financing route is taken.

PFI has some advantages too. Because the private sector has to take the risk, some of the delays and costs escalation which can otherwise arise can be avoided.

And, to answer my second question, it is the PFI developer who is bound into maintaining the building for years - so it has an inherent interest in ensuring that the building works.

Under the old system, the (private) builders could and did walk away after a short period.

Above all, PFI has given us a hospital of which we can be proud.

The alternatives was a very straightforward one - no hospital.