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Corbyn says documents show NHS is ‘on the table’ in trade talks with US
Labour has accused the Conservatives of negotiating a secret trade deal with the US to open up the NHS to American pharmaceutical companies.
Jeremy Corbyn said they had obtained uncensored government documents showing talks were at a “very advanced stage”.
He said the 451 pages covered six rounds of negotiations – taking place in Washington and London – starting in July 2107 to “just a few months ago”.
Speaking at a news conference in London, the Labour leader said the papers gave the lie to Boris Johnson’s claims that the NHS would not be part of any trade talks.
“The uncensored documents leave Boris Johnson’s denials in absolute tatters,” he told a news conference in London.
“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.”
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When and where shall the full text of these documents be published on the Internet for free access by everyone desiring it?
‘Added-value’ might be obtained if someone were first to highlight relevant passages and also append a list of page numbers where highlighted passages are to be found.
You can get a copy of the document via reddit link below.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/dkzlfc/officialsensitive_great_britain_is_practically/
Note that the documents takes several steps to avoid directly mentioning the NHS.
In some sections the NHS is grouped under the mnemonic SOE (State Owned Enterprises).
In others the NHS deliberately avoided as any point of reference but can be deduced from the net effect of the field of talks. (See patents section in document 4, pages 120 to 126 for example).
There is a fair amount of legal trade language used which means that a layman like myself can not get the full worth out of this document.
Could do with some better minds on this.