LETTER: Tell your MP how much you care about our NHS
Last week Caroline Lucas’s amendment to the Government’s Trade Bill, backed by the opposition parties, was heavily defeated in the Commons.
All Staffordshire Tory MPs voted against it.
The amendment would have protected our NHS from foreign control in any future trade deal. It would have ensured a comprehensive, publicly funded health service free at the point of delivery; protected NHS staff from cuts to wages and rights; protected the quality and safety of our health and care services; controlled the pricing of medicines and protected us from having our health data sold.
It would also have put a stop to commercial concerns suing this country for loss of profits if we change policy in the future.
So much for ‘taking back control’. Our NHS has just been handed on a plate to US health and pharmaceutical companies. Like so many of our public services which used to belong to us, rail, energy, water, mail, we will be giving our NHS away to foreign commercial concerns who operate solely for profit.
Please write to your MP to tell him/her how much you care about our NHS; that you do not want to be turned away from hospital because you cannot pay; that you do not want to have to find £50,000 for your hip replacement and to warn them that if they sell our NHS off to the highest bidder that will be the end of their political career. Clapping is not enough.
E. Welch, Ranton
