OK. In light of this, maybe some words on the leaked documents (thread)
As I have said before: no trade deal would be about selling the NHS. That’s a strange concept. However, a trade deal might well contain provisions that prove problematic for the NHS. Whether the NHS is mentioned or not is quite irrelevant in that respect.
As far as my expectations go the documents do not surprise me very much. They are summaries of preliminary talks. Some of these are of interest to the NHS - as was expected this particularly concerns the IP section and there were particular pharma and IP discussions.
They vindicate something I wrote in my earlier thread on pharma and trade talks: the US has a mandate to try to get other countries to adopt its IP system and while the UK has a strong IP system, it is different from the US one - so there’s room for change.
The documents show that the usual suspects were discussed: a linkage between patent status and drug admission, patent extension, test data exclusivity...
If there’s anything to be taken away it is just how focused the US is on exporting its own regulation, even where the differences aren’t that great - you could see that in the discussion of the US style patent extension versus the EU style supplementary protection certificate.
Are we at risk? As I said: there were no surprises. The US said that it would negotiate on these things in its negotiation objectives. It is bringing them up. That’s normal for negotiations, the UK can say no (if it wants to).
Is all of this a scandal? Strangely in a funny way yes. Not because this is discussed. And my quick scanning of the documents did not seem to indicate that UK officials said yes where they shouldn’t have. So why is this - (in a strange way) - a scandal?
Because politicians make it so. They make claims that are barely believable and always, always too strong. Here’s what politicians should say: The US will bring up its interests. Some of these will clash with our interests. We do not have to agree with them.
More recent statements have been moving in this direction, but previous statement left the impression that trade negotiations are about how many red roses the US will send the UK for valentines.
Well. They are not.
Well. They are not.
I sincerely apologise for being so boringly non-exited. Feel free to punish me by ignoring me.
However, let me do add my concerns that are more systematic: a) the US is going to raise a whole number of asks we want to say no to. b) if we say no to everything they’ll say “what‘s the point” c) the way the debate is going I don’t know if politicians can afford that.
