The greatest risk to the NHS: Conservatives like Cameron and Hunt
Back in 2014, David Cameron promised us all that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being negotiated between the European Union and the USA would not affect the National Health Service.
“I do not believe that our national health service is under threat … There are many parts of international co-operation and trade from which our national health service can be a huge beneficiary. For instance, we lead the world in sequencing people’s DNA and building up a vast databank, so that is a huge opportunity, and some of the leaders of our best hospitals are talking to new cities that are being built in China about how to establish health services. We should not be frightened of our NHS being a great British success story, parts of which can be exported to the rest of the world. We need to ensure that the TTIP and other such things make that possible.”
But Michael Bowsher QC, a former chair of the Bar Council’s EU law committee, revealed last month that the deal poses “a real and serious risk” to future UK government decision making regarding the NHS:
“We consider that the solution to the problems TTIP poses to the NHS – and which is likely to provide the greatest protection – is for the NHS to be excluded from the agreement by way of a blanket exception contained within the main text of TTIP,” Bowsher said.”
And if you want the opinion of the Conservative Government’s current Health secretary…
Today, Jeremy Hunt said leaving the EU altogether would push the NHS into budget cuts, falling standards and an exodus of staff. But then, he is already personally responsible for all three of those phenomena.
So who cares what he thinks?
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The tories always deny that our NHS will be affected by the ttip agreement, i emailed my local tory mp for Dover and Deal about it on more than one occassion. He assured me that ttip was no threat to our NHS, which is the standard tory response. However 38Degrees have petitioned hard on this issue and i am pursuaded by their argument that the ttip is a real threat to our NHS remaining a public service, there are many US health corporations that would dearly like to get a foothold on our NHS and this government could act to prevent it, but they won’t because they are ideologically driven and would just love to see our NHS opened up to these corporations and this would allow the complete backdoor privatisation of our NHS to happen. They do not like the idea of the ordinary folk having ownership of our NHS it is against every ideal of tory ideology. By not protecting it within the ttip agreement it allows them to achieve privatisation without having to put it in front of the electorate as policy at a General Election.
The Cons track record on most things is appalling…..they seriously lie about everything they touch such no one believes anything that comes out of their mealy mouths. Nothing is safe in their hands.
The tories do nothing right, it’s not in their nature to, the NHS under the tories, especially under Camoron and CHunt, is really in peril!