Labour has documents which show that the NHS will be "up for sale" in a post-Brexit US trade deal under Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn has claimed.

The Labour leader said his party had obtained an unredacted version of a 451-page document which lays out the details of talks involving UK and US officials.

Mr Corbyn said the papers contradict the prime minister's claim that the health service would not be a part of any trade talks with Washington.

'Absolute nonsense': Johnson dismisses Corbyn's NHS claim

"The uncensored documents leave Boris Johnson's denials in absolute tatters," he told a news conference.

"We have now got evidence that under Boris Johnson the NHS is on the table and will be up for sale.


"He tried to cover it up in a secret agenda and today it has been exposed."

But the Conservatives accused Mr Corbyn of "out-and-out lying" about the contents of the documents - misrepresenting what they say and quoting sections out of context.

Mr Johnson said Labour's claims were "total nonsense" and he could give an "absolute cast-iron guarantee that this a complete diversion and that the NHS under no circumstances will be on the table for negotiation, for sale".

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss said: "This sort of conspiracy theory fuelled nonsense is not befitting of the leader of a major political party."

But Sky's economics editor Ed Conway said the documents do not, at first reading, "contain any smoking guns".

He said: "It's remarkable how little the NHS itself comes up in these talks. Indeed, the American negotiators are reported as being 'sensitive to the particular sensitivities with the health sector in the UK'. That actually sounds more restrained than I'd have expected.

"There's some evidence of 'fishing expeditions' by the Americans on 'health insurance'. They seem to have been politely rebutted. Interesting, if not altogether unexpected. But not, as far as I can tell, a smoking gun of a plot to privatise the NHS or put it 'on the table'."

ANALYSIS, News Correspondent Diana Magnay

If there's one thing we can all be certain about in this campaign, it is that Jeremy Corbyn likes to talk about the NHS.

"Our NHS is not for sale" is as tired a campaign slogan at this point as "Get Brexit done" is for the Tories. But when the going gets tough for Jeremy Corbyn, that's the safe subject matter he'll retreat to time and again.

And the going has got tough. #CorbynCarCrash was trending on Twitter on Tuesday night in reference to Andrew Neil's forensic interview with the Labour leader - a hashtag which must make every Labour campaign adviser wince.

The problem for Mr Corbyn is that the documents don't contain that proof. They pertain to six rounds of talks which concluded in July this year, before Boris Johnson became prime minister.

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Mr Corbyn said the documents cover six rounds of talks from July 2017 to "just a few months ago" and show that discussions were at a "very advanced stage".

"We are talking here about secret trade talks for a deal with Donald Trump after Brexit," the Labour leader said.

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"These reports pull back the curtain on the secrecy that's being plotted for us all, behind closed doors, by the Conservative government.

"This is what they didn't want you to know."

On medicine pricing, Mr Corbyn said the document showed discussions on lengthening patents had already concluded.

In a summary of the second meeting, UK officials noted that "patent issues" around "NHS access to generic drugs will be a key consideration" in talks.

By the fourth meeting, officials from the two sides were ready to "exchange text" and "really take significant further steps" for "patents in pharmaceuticals/health".

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The Labour leader used the drug Humira, which is used to treat Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis, as an example.

This costs the NHS £1,409 a packet, compared to £8,115 in the US, he said.

Mr Corbyn said this was evidence that the trade talks were at a "very advanced stage".

"Longer patents can only mean one thing - more expensive drugs. Lives will be put at risk as a result of this," he said.

But the Conservatives said that British officials were in fact flagging a potential issue which needed to be avoid in future discussions.

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Another document notes that the US approach "makes total market access the baseline assumption of the trade negotiations and requires companies to identify exclusions, not the other way round".

In a separate text, the UK side said it had a "very open" services sector and "the US should expect the UK to be a liberalising influence" and that together they could "fly the good flag for services liberalisation".

Mr Corbyn cited this particular passage as evidence of a "green light for breaking open Britain's public services so corporations can profit from [them]".

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