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Jeremy Corbyn has demanded that Donald Trump does not try to push up medicine prices through a potential post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and US.
The Labour leader wrote to the president asking for reassurances that his administration will not try to include selling higher-priced US drugs to the NHS on its trade wish list.
His letter came as the US leader arrived in London on Wednesday night for the beginning of the Nato summit on a two-day state visit to the UK.
Mr Corbyn last week claimed documents obtained by his party confirm the NHS would be on the table in trade talks with the US under a Tory government.
He revealed 451-pages of “unredacted” information from meetings between US and UK officials, who discussed the stipulations of a free trade deal between the two nations after Britain leaves the EU.
In his letter, Mr Corbyn told the president he wanted “assurances” over the “prices paid to US drugs companies as a consequence of any such UK trade deal with the US”.
Labour has warned throughout the election campaign that allowing US medical companies to supply drugs to the NHS would push up the price of medicines.
Mr Corbyn wrote: “As you will know, the potential impact of any future UK-US trade agreement on our National Health Service and other vital public services is of profound concern to the British public.
“A critical issue in this context is the cost of drugs to our NHS. The cost of patented drugs in the US is approximately 2.5 times higher than in the UK, and the price of the top 20 medicines is 4.8 times higher than in the UK.
He added: “Any increase in the NHS drugs bill would be an unacceptable outcome of US-UK trade negotiations.
“Yet you have given a number of clear and worrying indications that this is exactly what you hope to achieve.
Jeremy Corbyn also urged the US President to:
– Accept the role of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to set the threshold for the cost-effectiveness of drugs for the NHS.
– Explicitly rule out any investor-state dispute settlement mechanism by which the UK Government could be sued for protecting public services.
– Ensure NHS patient data is fully exempted from digital trade and data sharing provisions in the agreement.
He told Mr Trump it would “go a long way to reassuring the British public” if he rowed back from the NHS-related negotiation aims seen in the leaked civil service paper on the UK-US talks.
Mr Corbyn wrote: “A revision of the US negotiating objectives along these lines would go a long way to reassuring the British public that the US government will not be seeking total market access to the UK public services – that the NHS will not be on the table in US-UK trade negotiations, that a US-UK trade deal will not open up NHS services to irreversible privatisation, and that the US government accepts that our NHS is not for sale in any form.”
Mr Corbyn sent a letter with similar demands to the Prime Minister on Monday, the eve of the Nato summit.
Air Force One was set to land in the UK on Monday evening as Mr Trump prepares for a showdown with allies over the funding of Nato.
The president previously said it would be “so bad” for Britain if Mr Corbyn was to become prime minister.
Mr Trump told Nigel Farage’s LBC radio programme in October: “Corbyn would be so bad for your country, he’d be so bad, he’d take you on such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places.”
