John Healey chairs the all-party parliamentary group on EU-US investment, and has been doing his best to prevent trade unions and campaign groups from joining opposition to TTIP over the past few months. Happily, all major trade unions in Britain are now part of the campaign to stop TTIP. So here are some basic truths on the NHS and TTIP, starting with the most important and getting more technical as they go on.
1. Health services, medical services (including midwifery and physiotherapy) and dental services are all included in the TTIP negotiations. We already knew this because we saw it with our own eyes in the EU’s draft offer to the USA that was uncovered last month. Indeed, Garcia Bercero’s letter acknowledges that health services are on the table. The only sector that has been excluded from the TTIP talks is audio-visual services, as a result of dogged insistence by the French. All other public services are in, and can be traded away for further liberalisation if the US negotiators so demand.
If David Cameron wished to exclude the NHS or any other public service from the negotiations, he could do as the French government has done. All that is needed for this to happen, as the British Medical Association (BMA) has demanded, is for no mention of health services to appear in TTIP at all. In reality, of course, it is Cameron’s government that has already opened up the NHS to private providers by means of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Why would he raise a finger to get it excluded from TTIP?
The French wanted to protect the audio-visual services and got it excluded but the Tories didn't pipe up to protect the NHS. Why?
2. Garcia Bercero’s letter also confirms another key charge from opponents of TTIP: that the NHS is open to attack under the new investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules that TTIP would introduce between the EU and USA. For the first time, US corporations would be able to bypass our domestic courts and challenge our national health policy decisions before ad hoc arbitration tribunals, and to sue us for hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘damages’ as a result of future policy changes that might affect their bottom line. This is one clear mechanism that would prevent any future government from bringing the NHS back into public sector hands, as the cost of compensating private providers would render such a move instantly unattractive.
Garcia Bercero would like us to believe that future challenges to the NHS would be ‘unlikely’. Yet the Slovak Republic has already lost a multi-million dollar case under similar rules to Dutch insurance company Achmea for reversing the country’s earlier (and deeply unpopular) privatisation of health insurance. Tobacco giant Philip Morris is currently using ISDS provisions to sue the Australian government for billions of dollars over its new public health law that all cigarettes must be sold in plain paper packaging. Ken Clarke MP, the minister with responsibility for TTIP, has admitted that the UK could face exactly such challenges from US health corporations if the treaty goes through".
Don't worry the NHS is safe in Tories hand. "We will keep the public debt down by selling the NHS off and save the fines", will be their election rallying cry.
4. This brings us to the final reason given by Garcia Bercero as to why we should not worry about the inclusion of public services in TTIP. Individual EU member states are still allowed to register their own special reservations for particular services in the liberalisation tables drawn up by the negotiators and submitted to the other side in the talks. Yet the UK government has entered such a reservation in TTIP for ambulance services only. Under TTIP, US health care companies would have the right to supply hospital services or social services.
1. Health services, medical services (including midwifery and physiotherapy) and dental services are all included in the TTIP negotiations. We already knew this because we saw it with our own eyes in the EU’s draft offer to the USA that was uncovered last month. Indeed, Garcia Bercero’s letter acknowledges that health services are on the table. The only sector that has been excluded from the TTIP talks is audio-visual services, as a result of dogged insistence by the French. All other public services are in, and can be traded away for further liberalisation if the US negotiators so demand.
If David Cameron wished to exclude the NHS or any other public service from the negotiations, he could do as the French government has done. All that is needed for this to happen, as the British Medical Association (BMA) has demanded, is for no mention of health services to appear in TTIP at all. In reality, of course, it is Cameron’s government that has already opened up the NHS to private providers by means of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Why would he raise a finger to get it excluded from TTIP?
The French wanted to protect the audio-visual services and got it excluded but the Tories didn't pipe up to protect the NHS. Why?
2. Garcia Bercero’s letter also confirms another key charge from opponents of TTIP: that the NHS is open to attack under the new investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules that TTIP would introduce between the EU and USA. For the first time, US corporations would be able to bypass our domestic courts and challenge our national health policy decisions before ad hoc arbitration tribunals, and to sue us for hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘damages’ as a result of future policy changes that might affect their bottom line. This is one clear mechanism that would prevent any future government from bringing the NHS back into public sector hands, as the cost of compensating private providers would render such a move instantly unattractive.
Garcia Bercero would like us to believe that future challenges to the NHS would be ‘unlikely’. Yet the Slovak Republic has already lost a multi-million dollar case under similar rules to Dutch insurance company Achmea for reversing the country’s earlier (and deeply unpopular) privatisation of health insurance. Tobacco giant Philip Morris is currently using ISDS provisions to sue the Australian government for billions of dollars over its new public health law that all cigarettes must be sold in plain paper packaging. Ken Clarke MP, the minister with responsibility for TTIP, has admitted that the UK could face exactly such challenges from US health corporations if the treaty goes through".
Don't worry the NHS is safe in Tories hand. "We will keep the public debt down by selling the NHS off and save the fines", will be their election rallying cry.
4. This brings us to the final reason given by Garcia Bercero as to why we should not worry about the inclusion of public services in TTIP. Individual EU member states are still allowed to register their own special reservations for particular services in the liberalisation tables drawn up by the negotiators and submitted to the other side in the talks. Yet the UK government has entered such a reservation in TTIP for ambulance services only. Under TTIP, US health care companies would have the right to supply hospital services or social services.
