Oral Answers to Questions

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services are excluded from future trade deals.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps the Government are taking to ensure that contracts for the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services will be excluded from future trade deals.

[Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What steps the Government are taking to ensure that contracts for the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services will be excluded from future trade deals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Fox]

I recommend the Government’s Command Paper on this issue, which we published last week. It sets out the scrutiny plans that will provide greater scrutiny in this country than most of our fellow countries in the European Union have.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Conservative Ministers chose to include the NHS in their approach to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which could have made it impossible to bring privatised NHS services back in-house. The Secretary of State will know that privatisation is proceeding apace in the NHS—it certainly is in my constituency, in our cancer-scanning services—so will he give us a cast-iron legal guarantee? That is what we will need to show that his Government are committed to excluding the NHS from future trade deals.

[Dr Fox]

Where do I start? First, this Government did not negotiate TTIP; the European Union negotiated it on behalf of this country, so it was not for the United Kingdom to determine the mandate. None the less, the hon. Lady should look at the agreements that are already out there. For example, article 9.2 of CETA talks about the exclusion of

“services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority”.

It is quite clear from what the Government included in the CETA ratification that we intend to make provision to ensure that Governments have the right to regulate public services. I think that is a good idea, so I cannot understand why the Labour party voted against it.