BUILDING the new Mersey Gateway bridge will cost more under the Private Finance Initiative scheme.

That was the claim made by Dr Anne Stafford yesterday, who spoke on behalf of the National Alliance Against Tolls.

The former accountant, who now lectures at Manchester University, said ultimately the extra cost would be met by the public.

Dr Stafford said: "The use of private finance for public infrastructure adds substantially to the overall cost and this is necessarily reflected in either the charges to the public sector via shadow tolls, or the toll charges to users.

She added: "There is a lack of evidence demonstrating that the new Mersey Gateway will have the requisite traffic flows to make it both commercially viable and affordable to the public, given the high construction and financing costs."

She also questioned whether, given that the government was funding 76% of construction costs, why they couldn’t also find the remaining 24% to save costs overall.

During cross-examination by Halton Council’s QC Timothy Straker, he reminded Dr Stafford that the PFI scheme was the only one being proposed by government.

Dr Stafford was also forced to accept that despite her reservations, the bridge could be built successfully under the current PFI scheme.