Theresa May has refused to rule out giving US companies access to NHS contracts as part of a future trade deal with Donald Trump’s White House.
At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, challenged May over how she would respond if Washington pushed for access to Britain’s public services for US corporations.
“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,” he said. “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?”
The prime minister refused to do so, instead insisting that Cable, a former business secretary, “doesn’t know what they’re going to say in their requirements for that free trade agreement. We will go into those negotiations to get the best possible deal for the United Kingdom.”
Afterwards May’s press secretary repeatedly refused to comment further. He stressed that as part of TTIP, the US-EU trade deal that has never been finalised, the UK had secured exemptions to ensure the NHS could not be targeted.
However, he would not rule out, in principle, US private sector involvement in the NHS in future.
“When we looked at the debate on TTIP we were very clear from our side that the NHS has special protections and in effect wouldn’t be included,” he said. “We do not yet have an existing position on a trade deal that is yet to be negotiated.“It is very much a hypothetical.”
A spokesman for the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, condemned May’s failure to rule the NHS out of any future deal, saying Britain’s voters would never accept the “cherry-picking” of public sector contracts by US corporations.
“I think it’s clear that the failure to rule out the kind of predatory corporate access to our NHS means that’s part of the deal that is being considered by our PM and considered by this government.”
The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, hit back at Trump earlier this week when the president claimed on Twitter that the NHS was “going broke and not working”.
Hunt replied directly, saying: “NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.”
The Labour MP Peter Kyle, of the campaign group Open Britain, said after PMQs: “Theresa May just gave Donald Trump the green light to get his hands on our National Health Service.
“Just days after the US president took to Twitter to insult the NHS, the prime minister was given a clear opportunity to rule out opening up our health service to private competition from US companies. Her clear refusal to do so underlines her weakness in trade negotiations and should concern us all.”
The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, intends to begin negotiating deals with non-EU countries as soon as possible after Brexit.
