TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
TTIP is a scheme organised by international big business to get access to public budgets. It is especially keen to get its hands on the money that funds the NHS. It’s a trade treaty being negotiated right now, between the European Union and the US with the aim of making trade easier between these two big economic powers. It’s being negotiated in secret – we only know what is included in the deal from leaked papers.
What you will be told is that it will bring jobs and wealth to us as members of the EU. However there is very little evidence for this. What it will do is treat public services as goods to be traded like any other merchandise. It will allow our NHS services to be sold off to the highest bidder amongst big American health corporations.
If we later restore these services to public control, TTIP will allow these corporations to sue our government for massive sums for the loss of profits they might have made otherwise! This racket is known as the ‘Investor-State Dispute Procedure’ or ISDS. It will deter future governments from restoring the NHS because it gives corporations powers over governments and parliaments. It should be replaced by using the well-established legal systems all EU countries have.
Other services are in danger too. US standards and regulations safeguarding things like food, public health, chemicals and drugs, environmental protection, health and safety, and workers’ rights are generally lower than those in the EU. We’ll be forced to reduce our standards to theirs, via ‘regulatory harmonisation’.
Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) is asking you to support us in campaigning to:
・Keep health and social services OUT of TTIP
・Make sure that the ISDS is not included
・Make sure that workers’ rights and health professionals’ training
and qualifications are kept at EU standards
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Join your local KONP group and join in their activities – Defend our NHS is YORK KONP group. For list of other KONP groups.
Write to your MP and your candidate Member of the European Parliament (in time for the Euro elections on 22nd May) – we can give you sample letters.
Give a copy of this leaflet to at least 3 other people – more copies are available here Kitty leaflet on TTIP.
Defend our NHS York 
Pingback: Stop multinationals getting their claws into our NHS | Defend our NHS York
Pingback: Andy Burnham MP | Defend our NHS York
Pingback: TTIP Day of Action in York 12 July 2014 | Defend our NHS York
Pingback: Hugo Swire stars in “Private Eye” as a supporter of the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Invesment Partnership which some see as a stealthy privatisation of the National Health Service | East Devon Alliance