A couple of weeks ago, a television news producer invited me to make one of those 40-second recordings that pass for serious treatment of important subjects these days. The subject he had in mind was the private finance initiative - the system by which the government pays for most new hospital building. Fearing I was incapable of the necessary compression, I declined with thanks. The inevitable question followed. Did I know anyone who would publicly express doubts about the merits of the scheme? Usually I refuse to act as a talent scout. But on the subject of the PFI, I made a confident suggestion: Professor Allyson Pollock of the school of public policy at University College London. “Totally discredited,” the producer replied. Suspecting that he was not an authority on health economics, I asked him how he came to that conclusion. “The government,” he replied, “says that her research does not stand up.”

I should have given the producer a lecture about the responsibility of broadcasters in a free society. Instead I told Prof Pollock of the conversation when next we met. Her reaction was disconcertingly calm. It was, she said, all part of a campaign. She had been threatened with libel. Complaints had been made to the governing council of UCL. Enthusiasts for the PFI - some of them with vested interests in its extension - had warned her that she was putting her career in jeopardy.

The arguments about the PFI are too arcane for successful exposure in this column - particularly the almost metaphysical dispute about the benefits to be gained by transferring risks from public authorities to private investors. But one thing is clear. If Prof Pollock’s criticisms are misconceived, she is wrong in very respectable academic company. This month, the British Medical Journal - not noted for its intellectual irresponsibility - published a paper that she had written with a colleague from the University of Manchester. Criticism of the PFI neither comes from one individual nor from one institution.

The “summary of points” that accompanies the BMJ article includes the assertion that “the private finance initiative brings no new capital investment into public services and is a debt that has to be financed by future generations”. It concludes that “the government’s case for using the PFI rests on a value for money assessment skewed in favour of private finance”. Prof Pollock stands convicted not of inadequate scholarship but of expressing the truth in plain language. By pointing out that favourable assessments of PFIs have been made by companies that make money from them, Prof Pollock has put profits at risk. It is not the way to win friends in the private sector.

However, the most recent assault on Prof Pollock’s academic integrity appears in paragraphs 65 to 67 of the latest report from the House of Commons select committee on health. “The assertion that ‘there is a new pact with big business which is not operating in favour of the population’ was so extreme as to undermine confidence in (her) analysis and conclusions”. Prof Pollock’s use of language is a subject for legitimate debate. The accuracy of her judgment is, however, beyond doubt. Yet the committee went on to record that her claim “was not backed up by evidence”.

David Hinchcliffe, the committee’s chairman, voted against the inclusion of the attack on Prof Pollock. He believes that she makes “an important contribution to the debate”. More important, the criticisms “did not address the evidence and were technically incorrect”. They also - though the chairman did not say so - had strange origins. Paragraph 65 to 67 were drafted, not by the committee clerk but by Julia Drown, a Labour MP.

Ms Drown was initially reluctant to admit authorship. However, when it was suggested that she was acting as an agent of the government, she insisted that the new clauses were all her own work. She is not, she claims, an unqualified admirer of the PFI. “The jury is out. But it is not the big bad monster that some people pretend.” She added evidence of her objectivity by reference to paragraphs in the report that are critical of the PFI and were also inspired by her. All she wanted was a rational discussion.

We can only applaud Ms Drown’s enthusiasm for informed debate. But it does not entirely explain the determination to discredit Prof Pollock rather than her conclusions. We must accept the assurance that the government had no hand in drafting the condemnation and that Ms Drown - until her election, a hospital finance officer - was motivated only by a desire to pursue the truth.

But there is still a question to answer: why does Prof Pollock provoke such hostility? The answer is that, because of her passionate conviction that patients are being cheated, she refuses to observe the usual hypocrisies. The government supports the PFI to prove that it loves private enterprise. Private industry supports it as a way of making money. As Prof Pollock might well say, the rest is all hooey.