Cameron Desperate
to Stop Scandal as Secret Plans to Sell the National Health Service are
Discovered
By James Wright Global Research, January 29, 2016
The Conservative government have blocked access to
legal documents that may show the impact of a controversial ‘free trade’
agreement on the NHS.
The Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership, known as TTIP, is a US-EU trade deal currently under
negotiation, and is avidly supported by the likes of David Cameron and
Barack Obama.
The blocked legal documents,
campaigners have cautioned, may contain the extent to which, under TTIP,
private NHS contractors could sue the government for introducing policies
that negatively impact their profits.
The Investor State Dispute
Settlement (ISDS) is the most controversial element of TTIP. It allows
corporations to sue governments or public bodies before an arbitral tribunal,
for policies that are perceived as harmful to their profits. An ‘arbitral
tribunal’ is an international hearing, out of the courts and behind closed
doors, which decides how much money these companies should get.
The supposed motive is to
encourage foreign investment, despite there being no empirical evidence for
this (there is no ISDS in any trade agreements Brazil
has, or between the US and China).
ISDS is exclusive to foreign investment; US companies
gain the right to these international arbitration tribunals, but EU companies
must stick to national courts. Thus, ISDS can discriminate in favour of US
companies.
The cost of legal proceedings is usually to the tune
of millions of dollars, meaning it is only affordable for big business, despite
medium to large companies amounting to only half the investors.
On the contrary, favouring
American big business would disrupt free competition.
Furthermore, accrediting
authority to international tribunals doesn’t fair well for democracy; should
decisions about the constraints on national sovereignty take place behind
closed doors? Governments have a transparency obligation to their citizens,
especially when it’s private companies after public money.
To top it off, there can be a dubious selection of panel
members by law firms who specialise in international arbitration. There is a
possibility they would choose people who are not impartial. It’s hard to say
how far multinational billion dollar US giants have disseminated their
influence.
The El Salvadorian government is being sued for $300 million by OceanaGold
for revoking permission for a gold mine, after public concern that it risked
contaminating water supplies through an ISDS clause. They are being chastised
for daring to put clean water before profit.
The Ecuadorian government has been ordered to pay
$1.77bn for expropriating its oil reserves at a loss to American oil giant Oxy.
This is after the indigenous people in the oil-rich Ecuadorian-Amazon region
accused the company of exploiting the resources, with no benefit to the poor
and local communities. The US group also sold a part of an oil field without
proper authorisation to Canada’s Alberta Energy Corp. Shame on them for
exercising sovereignty over their own resources for the good of the residents.
Argentina was sued by international
utility companies for imposing a freeze on people’s energy and water bills. It
was these companies’ large charges that had prompted the government to act in
the first place.
Big tobacco – Phillip Morris –
is using a trade agreement between Australia and
Hong Kong to sue Australia for replacing cigarette packet branding with
gruesome anti-smoking images. In the UK, MPs voted in favour of bringing
in standardised plain cigarette packaging for May this year. If TTIP had already
been implemented, big tobacco would have been able to sue the UK taxpayer for
millions, for the government putting public health before private profit.
TTIP and the removal of ‘red
tape’
ISDS is just the tip of the
iceberg. Currently, when updates of Cameron’s EU negotiations are broadcast on
the BBC, they speak of the removal of ‘red tape’. What they are referring to is
the abolition of regulations, often concerning the environment or public
health. TTIP is the homogenisation of ‘non-tariff measures’ in the US and the
EU, with the aim of economic growth; i.e. abolishing regulation so we adhere to
American standards of ‘free-trade’.
For example, the ‘precautionary principle’: in the EU if there is a
suspected risk that an action or policy can cause harm to the public or the
environment, science must then say otherwise. There is no such regulation in
the US.
Essentially, our governments have
taken a look at the world and decided that less regulated capitalism is what we need. The idea that freedom
means putting the profit of international corporations before things like
public health, the environment and local business is ludicrous. Besides,
transatlantic trade is already relatively free. There are not many
regulations left.
Does ‘free-trade’ even correspond
to economic growth? Who does this growth benefit? NAFTA is a trade deal between
Mexico and the US that began in 1994. From 1994- 2014 the income per person
increased only by 1% annually.
But, would it have done worse
without NAFTA? From 1960-80 Mexico’s GDP per capita nearly doubled (before the
neo-liberal handling of the 1980 debt crisis), if that had continued the
country would have European living standards today. This is what happened in
South Korea. Of course, Mexico is an entirely different scenario to the EU, but
this does prove that ‘free-trade’ does not necessitate economic growth for
citizens.
The NHS
ISDS could cement present NHS
privatisation, making it very costly to reverse, while proceedings are closed
off from public scrutiny in kangaroo courts.
And while the ISDS clause could
stall the reverse of existing NHS privatisation, the TTIP agreement itself
could open it up to further
privatisation.
In response to a freedom of
information request made to see the legal documents, business secretary Sajid
Javid said civil servants need:
space in which to seek candid
advice from their lawyers. They are less likely to seek such advice if there is
an expectation that it will subsequently be disclosable.
The government also stated:
Transparency in the decision
making process and access to the information upon which decisions have
been made can enhance accountability particularly over significant trade deals
such as this.
Yet, this decision is ultimately
suspicious. If it weren’t for vast campaigning TTIP would not even be known to
the public.
Nick Dearden, director of Global
Justice Now, said:
If this trade deal is supposed to
benefit all of us, why has it been so secretive? The documents we have seen so
far have mostly come from Wikileaks or after intense pressure from campaign
groups.
Like the kangaroo courts proposed
under ISDS, the entirety of TTIP negotiations were supposed to occur away from
the public eye.
With the government quietly proposing an inquiry into
moving to a pay NHS, while also starving it of funding, it
would be naive to think our public health service was safe in their hands.
Given what we know of TTIP so far, surely transparency for the public trumps
the needs of civil servants.
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