You may remember that I wrote to Alan Johnson (Labour MP for West Hull) nearly two months ago to ask him about Labour Party policy towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the secret deal being negotiated between the EU and the US. I pointed out that TTIP, though

“posing as a traditional trade agreement, has as its goal the removal of regulatory barriers which, even now, serve to protect us in a number of ways, e.g. with regard to workers’ rights, food safety rules, toxic chemical use, digital privacy laws and the banking safeguards introduced after 2008.”

Moreover, I told him, it “wants to open up public services and government procurement contracts to competition from multinational companies”, thus threatening “even more privatisation in areas such as health and education”. I asked him what Labour party policy would be on TTIP if it won the 2015 general election, and I suggested that “TTIP, and the secret negotiations to get it, should be abandoned entirely” (see my blog for the full letter: https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/secretly-negotiating-to-steal-whats-ours/).

So far I have received nowt but a stony silence from my parliamentary representative. Meanwhile, due to campaigns against it, the negotiators’ secrecy has been undermined (which must make them really cross). One such campaign is being waged by The People’s NHS, and it’s not hard to see why: the group points out that Slovakia (which has a similar deal) was sued for trying to nationalise part of its healthcare service while Australia is being sued for trying to introduce plain cigarette packets. The People’s NHS points out:

“If companies wanted to sue our government, they can do so in a secret court. There will be no public outcry about what they’re trying to do because in most cases, we won’t know it has happened until it’s too late. This deal is so secretive, and the consequences so potentially far-reaching, that the Guardian labelled it ‘a gunpowder plot against democracy’. If we don’t get this deal debated in the open, we may never know the full scale of the havoc it could wreak.”

So I’ve written to Alan Johnson asking for a reply. Meanwhile, let’s all sign the petition: http://action.peoplesnhs.org/eu-ttip-debate