Downing Street insists NHS is ‘not for sale’ to US corporations

The NHS will be protected under any future trade deal with the US, Downing Street has insisted.

The Prime Minister raised fears the NHS is “for sale” after refusing to rule out allowing US firms to compete for health service contracts after Brexit.

Critics accused Mrs May of giving Donald Trump the “green light to get his hands on” the NHS after she sidestepped calls to exclude it from trade talks when challenged at Prime Minister’s Questions.

But Downing Street insisted she had previously made her position clear and that current protections for the health service would be extended after Brexit.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, who quizzed Mrs May on the issue during Prime Minister’s Questions, said her response had been “pathetic”.

During PMQs, Sir Vince Cable said: “The Prime Minister knows that one of the key objectives of American trade negotiators in any future deal after Brexit is to secure access for American companies to business in the NHS.

“Can she give an absolute guarantee that in those negotiations the NHS will be excluded from their scope, and can she confirm that in her conversations with President Trump she’s made it absolutely clear to him that the NHS is not for sale?”

Mrs May replied: “We are starting the discussions with the American administration first of all looking at what we can do to increase trade between the US and the United Kingdom already, even before the possibility of any free trade agreement.”