Labour: Health agency is ‘up for sale’
Party alleges cutbacks in a post-brexit future
LONDON — Britain’s health system became a battleground in the country’s election campaign on Wednesday, as opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accused Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson of secretly seeking a post-brexit trade deal with the United States that would drive up the cost of drugs and imperil the state-funded service.
With the future of the National Health Service a hot issue in campaigning ahead of the Dec. 12 general election, Corbyn waved 451 pages of documents at a news conference declaring that they covered six rounds of negotiations between U.S. and U.K. negotiators over two years from July 2017. The documents, which have been published in redacted form, cover preliminary soundings ahead of formal trade talks that are set to start after Britain leaves the European Union.
Corbyn said the leaked trade dossier provided proof Johnson was planning to put the National Health Service “up for sale” in trade talks.
“He tried to cover it up in a secret agenda, and today it has been exposed,” Corbyn said.
Johnson — who was not prime minister for most of the period when the talks took place — rejected the allegation.
“It is a total nonsense, and it is endlessly repeated by the Labour Party, that the NHS is somehow up for sale,” Johnson said.
Labour is campaigning on the idea that the overstretched but treasured NHS is not safe in Conservative hands.
Though the allegation that the health service as a whole could be up for sale after Brexit is overstated, Labour is hoping to tap into concerns that the Conservatives will be looking for a bigger role for the private sector in the NHS’ future.
The leaked documents do bolster Labour’s claim that health care could be a bargaining chip in U.S.-U.K. trade talks. At present, the NHS can often negotiate low prices from drug companies because it is so big.
The U.S. could try to demand during trade talks that Britain pay American pharma companies more for drugs. It could push for extended patents that would prevent Britons buying cheaper generic versions of U.s.-patented drugs, something that happened in talks on a U.s.-mexico-canada trade deal.
The documents also suggested that a post-brexit deal between the U.K. and the EU that kept Britain closely aligned with the European economy would come at the cost of a special free trade agreement with the United States.
Labour was struggling to push the focus of the election onto domestic issues and away from allegations that Corbyn — a champion of the Palestinians — has allowed anti-jewish prejudice to fester in the party.