Guido thought he’d factcheck Corbyn’s claims on what the unredacted documents say – and it turns out there was quite a lot of contortion on Corbyn’s part to interpret the documents as menacingly as he presented them. There’s already a lot of push back from the Department for Trade pointing out the documents were not from trade discussions where things were agreed, rather they were from the working groups in which both the UK and US set out their starting positions for any future trade talks.

Medicine Pricing:

Corbyn: “The US and the UK have already finished the discussion on lengthening patents for medicines, longer patents can mean only one thing: more expensive drugs”

Document references to patent law:

Corbyn also specifically pointed to page 51 of the second document, claiming it says “patent issues… [around] NHS access to generic drugs will be a key consideration. Deliberately missing key words and changing the meaning of what was discussed. The paragraph says the UK is in difficult territory here because of disagreements over this area.

The NHS Being ‘On the Table’

Corbyn said:

“Labour has been warning that NHS services will also be on the table in trade talks for a sellout deal with Trump… the documents show Trump was right.” “These documents make clear that for the US – to quote page 41 of the third meeting report – “everything is included unless something is specifically excluded”. They want “total market access as the baseline assumption of a trade negotiation” “But surely you can’t believe that British officials would demand the NHS be excluded. Apparently not. In fact, on behalf of the Conservative Government officials reassured their counterparts that the US should expect the UK to be a liberalising influence, and that together they could fly the green flag for service liberalisation.”

Page 41 of the third meeting report – a 77 page report that mentions the NHS once – does include the phrase “everything is included unless something is specifically excluded”, in the context of the US explaining their approach to free trade

It certainly wasn’t a concession from the UK negotiating team. As the Department for Trade makes clear, no agreements could have been made as these meetings were working groups to set out each others’ stalls – not negotiations.

For working groups discussing trade, the NHS is barely mentioned in these documents. Including all 451 pages, the NHS is mentioned 4 times, once regarding defending the NHS’s access to cheaper drugs for patients (to spell it out – that’s a good thing). One sentence even spells out the US were “Sensitive to the particular sensitivities with the health sector in the UK”:

Within an hour, the key facets of Corbyn’s big announcement have fallen flat…

UPDATE: The Conservatives have come out with a response that doesn’t mince its words: