If you mean it, put it in writing: Unions to Cameron on NHS & #TTIP

10 Jun 2015, by Owen Tudor in International

At Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon, David Cameron repeated – yet again – his claim that we should trust him that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP – the EU-US trade deal) would have no impact on the NHS. Under fire from Labour Leader Harriet Harman MP, as well as from the SNP and UKIP, he insisted that TTIP would not affect the privatisation or liberalisation of the NHS – a line he has been peddling ever since it became clear that such an outcome would be deeply unpopular with the British people.

Why on earth don’t people like us trust him with the NHS? Why do we treat him like a half-cut used-car salesman leaning on the bar of his local saloon bar, starting each sentence on the issue with “I reckon…”?

Here are three reasons:

First, the text of TTIP hasn’t been written yet, so it’s a bit difficult to be certain what will and won’t be in it. Apparently the Prime Minister has a crystal ball (strange he didn’t see his re-election coming then!) which means he knows, when no one else does.

Second, every time he gets asked to write the exclusion of the NHS into the text of the treaty, he refuses. The French Government vetoed the inclusion of cultural industries early in the process, but David Cameron won’t do the same for the NHS. If he means what he says about TTIP not affecting the NHS, he should put it in writing, in the agreement. It isn’t just the TUC and health campaigners who are demanding he do that, by the way. Just before the last Parliament was dissolved, the Select Committee for Business, Innovation and Skills, with a majority of MPs from the then Coalition parties, suggested he do just that.

Third, even if there was an exclusion of the NHS in the text of the treaty – which is something the European Parliament’s neoliberal dominated international trade committee (INTA) agreed a fortnight ago – the NHS would still be affected by the privileged access foreign investors have under Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) to sue governments whose decisions accept their profits. Like, for example, if a future UK government tried to renationalise parts of the sold-off NHS as Slovakia did or even, as Canada is finding out, if a government agency refused to list for use in the health service an expensive and ineffective drug!

So you can sort of see why people don’t believe the Prime Minister when he claims the NHS won’t suffer under TTIP. If he wants to secure people’s trust, he should write it in!

Until then, Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey is absolutely right to say that:

“People across Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England want the NHS out of TTIP and Cameron must be prepared to use his veto to get the NHS out. Every single political party across the UK supports an NHS carve-out with the exception of the Tories and the Liberal Democrats who have refused to back the demand. There is genuine and deeply-felt opposition to the NHS being part of a US trade deal.”