Eastbourne’s MP must protect the NHS from US trade deal

Many of the 62 per cent of people in Eastbourne who voted to leave the EU did so because they wanted to see our Government in control of all decisions.

So how must those people be feeling now when they realise trade deals will grant many of the powers the EU once had to foreign private investors?

Negotiations are now taking place over trade agreements with other countries. Trade agreements aim to allow private businesses the ability to trade freely in both countries.

So, just as the EU set regulations that every member had to abide by, a trade agreement will have the same result.

Trade agreements will always result in the country with the highest level of regulation reducing it down to match those of the country with the lower levels.

Regulations protect people, whereas reducing regulations allows business access to more profit. Minimum wage, health and safety regulations, food hygiene standards and working conditions are a few examples of such regulations.

These trade deals are a simple choice to prioritise profit over people. Any move by a government to increase regulation in a way that limited the capacity to profit for foreign businesses could prove an expensive for that government.

An increase in minimum wage, could for example, result in a legal action that awarded foreign businesses financial compensation for the loss of profit they may incur as a result.

If we form a trade deal with America and our NHS is included in that trade deal the US healthcare giants would be free to bid to run NHS services. These corporations have bled their own country dry. We know they are desperate to do the same here. There is a trade bill currently going through Parliament and this campaign has been calling for MPs to support an amendment that will exclude the NHS.

Caroline Ansell has said that the Trade Bill will leave the Government free to not have the NHS on the table in a US-UK trade agreement.

But, in an online survey we have found 100 per cent of local people asked believe the NHS will be on the table and 97per cent them oppose this entirely. At this time, it is not surprising to see how much our population care about their NHS. We call on Caroline Ansell to support an amendment to exclude the NHS from a US-UK trade deal.

Local people need to have that guarantee that their NHS will be protected from the US healthcare giants’ greed. We need to know our town’s MP is acting in the interests of our healthcare.