It’s your choice: The EU or NHS
ONE of Britain’s top doctors has joined senior political figures to warn that voters have just 50 days to save the NHS by choosing to exit in the European Union referendum.
With the historic vote looming on June 23, senior consultant Angus Dalgleish has joined Ukip leader Nigel Farage, Tory MP Peter Bone and former Labour foreign secretary Lord Owen in warning voters of a stark choice: keeping the NHS or staying in the EU.
It comes after The Daily Express produced evidence from the EU’s secret TTIP trade talks with the US which proves the NHS will be forced to compete with the private sector and healthcare firms from America and Europe.
A committee on state enterprises and monopolies will order bodies such as the NHS not to “distort the market”. Members of the committee would be decided in Brussels and Washington .
A clause states: “Anti-competitive business practices and state interventions have the potential to distort the proper functioning of markets and undermine the benefits of trade liberalisation.”
Mr Dalgleish, a top cancer specialist, told the Express: “It will be a free-for-all. The NHS will have to compete with [foreign] providers. It is already virtually bankrupt so it would not stand a chance.
“Voters have a choice between keeping the NHS or remaining in the EU.”
Mr Farage said: “There are 50 days to save the NHS.
“Huge American corporations want to use TTIP to get their hands on the NHS so they can asset-strip it.
“Decisions about our NHS should be made by us, those that rely on it, not those that want to profit from it.”
Mr Bone said: “The plans by the EU and US to either privatise or dismantle the NHS are outrageous. Remaining in the EU is the greatest risk our NHS has ever faced.”
Lord Owen, who is a former health minister and supported staying in the European Community in 1975, has already warned that TTIP would wreck the NHS.
He said: “No one can justify secret trade negotiations the Commission have signed up for in TTIP. Little has been done to redress its errors.
“The EU/Eurozone from 1992, in marked contrast to the European Community of 1975, creeps into every nook and cranny of our life.
“We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get out.”