There is absolutely no risk of privatising the NHS from TTIP

Echoing a point previously made in Parliament:

UPDATE: Here is an extract from the letter which Nick Clegg mentioned, showing how the NHS isn’t going to be forced to privatise by TTIP. It’s by the EU Trade Commissioner, closely involved in all the talks over TTIP:

As you know, the EU’s chief negotiator for TTIP, Ignacio Garcia Bercero, wrote to the Chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on this subject in July last year. The situation has not changed but I would like to underline some of the points made.

To be clear, the effects of the EU’s approach to public health services in trade agreements such as TTIP are that:

• member states do not have to open public health services to competition from private providers, nor do they have to outsource services to private providers
• member states are free to change their policies and bring back outsourced services back into the public sector whenever they choose to do so, in a manner respecting property rights (which in any event are protected under UK law)
• it makes no difference whether a member state already allows some services to be outsourced to private providers, or not

You can read Cecilia Malmström’s letter about TTIP in full here.