Transatlantic Trade Danger!

Dear Editor

I write to alert your readers to one of the biggest threats to face public services and our health service in particular, in decades.

It comes in the form of an international trade agreement currently been negotiated without any reference to the electorate.

 

The agreement is called theTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Negotiations for this trade agreement(which were initially held in secret) would allow the wholesale incursion by the private sector into public services and public procurement. If passed this agreement would make it night on impossible to bring poorly performing privatised services back under public ownership and threaten those already under public ownership.

 

TTIPis purely about increasing the power of multinational investors, generally big business and hedge funds, and reducing regulation on these bodies. TTIP would establish in law the right of multi-national companies to sue nation states in a special court– The Investor –State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – if the nation’s regulatory framework were deemed a barrier to free trade.

 

Campaigning bodies such as War on Want, the People’s assembly and trade unions are alerting people to this threat. Local people should contact their councillors, MP’s and EMP’S calling upon them to have public services taken out ofTTIP before it is too late.

Regards,

Unite the Union