Starmer must be stopped from putting the NHS on the table in Trump trade negotiations

More than 7,500 people have sent letters to prime minister Keir Starmer – via EveryDoctor – demanding that he keeps the NHS off the table in trade negotiations with US president Donald Trump. Campaign group EveryDoctor instigated the call to protect the public health service from predatory US interests. It is asking as many people as possible to join them in writing to the prime minister.

Crucially, the group has launched the letter campaign in response to worrying signals from Starmer that the Labour Party government is gearing up to use the NHS as a bargaining chip.

EveryDoctor says the NHS is not a bargaining chip for Trump trade negotiations

Ahead of trade negotiations with the White House, multiple UK trade experts have repeatedly warned that Trump will make a full trade agreement with the US conditional on opening up the NHS to US corporations.

Big Pharma from the US has long lobbied for reforms to UK drug pricing. This is what keeps the costs of medicine low, and accessible on the NHS. Notably, as Labour chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee told the i Paper in January:

American drug firms want a looser regime from Nice [the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] when it comes to drug pricing. They will argue that Nice needs to focus more on value than price.

But the bottom line to that is they’re seeking freedom to sell more US medicine at higher prices to the NHS. And the NHS is obviously a monopoly buyer, so has real power to drive prices down. I’m sure Big Pharma will make that case to Trump. Whether he would put that front and centre we have to see.

Moreover, there’s also the infamous right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation’s agenda for a Republican presidency – Project 2025. Crucially, although Trump has distanced himself from the roadmap, the think tank drew it up under the previous Trump term. Multiple officials from his administration were involved in drafting it. And despite his protestations of involvement with the neoliberal wishlist, much of it Trump has predictably begun taking up.

What does this say on the NHS? Unsurprisingly, it calls for the Trump administration to open up UK services to the US.

And patient data is another avenue in which the US could crack open the NHS to US corporate profiteering. Groups like Global Justice Now have warned that Starmer’s efforts to negotiate a Big Tech-focused deal could invariably lead to the export of private NHS data to the US. This, it warns, could pave the way for companies weaponising this data to manufacture new healthcare technologies it will sell back to the NHS at exorbitant prices.

Now, there are alarming murmurings from the UK government that the NHS is indeed up for grabs in trade negotiations.

NHS should not be ‘on the table’

EveryDoctor’s founder Dr Julia Grace Patterson has therefore written to supporters. In particular, its over her alarm at a recent comment the prime minister made in the Telegraph. Writing on Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, Starmer leaned into famous World War 2 iconography, stating that:

That is why on tariffs, the immediate priority is to keep calm and fight for the best deal. Nobody wins from a trade war. The economic consequences, here and across the globe, could be profound.

However, he followed this noting that with regards to a “economic prosperity deal”:

all options remain on the table.

Of course, EveryDoctor is therefore concerned that this means the NHS would be up for sale to secure a trade deal with Trump.

It’s why the group has started a campaign to demand Starmer keep the NHS off the table. So far, more than 7,500 people have used its letter tool to send a clear message to the prime minister.

The letter template notes the “particularly concerning” fact that Labour didn’t stipulate its opposition to serving the NHS up on a platter in its election manifesto. As such, it sets out how:

The British people voted based on your party’s stated positions and promises; therefore, you have no democratic mandate to include our National Health Service in any such negotiations. To do so would represent a significant departure from the platform on which you were elected and a breach of the trust placed in you by the electorate.

Demanding that his government exclude the NHS from any trade negotiations, it states the public’s:

overwhelming support for keeping the NHS publicly owned, free at the point of use, and protected from commercial interests. Any compromise on these principles in trade negotiations would be a betrayal of public trust and the founding values of the NHS.

EveryDoctor is urging as many people as possible to send Starmer a letter. It needs the British public to spell out in no uncertain terms how the NHS:

is not an asset to be traded.

You can send a letter here.

Whether demonstrating the depth of public dissent for this will stop Starmer from capitulating to Trump yet remains to be seen – but EveryDoctor are going to try.

Featured image via the Canary