President Donald J Trump has again confirmed that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) will not form any part of future UK-U.S. free trade deal negotiations even if it was served to the U.S. “on a silver platter”.
President Trump made the comments during a press conference in London on Tuesday morning alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The American president is in the United Kingdom for the 70th anniversary of the formation of the transatlantic defence union.
Asked whether the NHS would be on the negotiating table in post-Brexit talks with the United Kingdom, President Trump said he had “never even thought about it, honestly”.
Alluding to his focus being on his own country’s healthcare system, President Trump continued: “We are going to have a great health care system. We’re doing great health care work. We’ve got things really running well and if we get elected — if we take the House, keep the Senate, keep the White House — we’ll have phenomenal health care.
“Right now, we’ve made it very good, and we have 180 million people on plans that they absolutely love, private plans that they absolutely love.
“But in this country, no, they have to work that out for themselves… We have absolutely nothing to do with it, and we wouldn’t want to if you handed it to us on a silver platter. We want nothing to do with it.”
President Trump’s comments echo those he made twice in the past year — last month on Nigel Farage’s LBC radio show and in June — where he said that the NHS would not be part of a trade deal because it is “not trade”.
Far-left leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, who is trailing behind Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in the polls, has sought to weaponise the NHS by claiming that the British taxpayer-funded healthcare service is at risk of American takeover in post-Brexit trade talks.
In response to President Trump’s and Mr Corbyn’s comments, Prime Minister Johnson told Sky News: “I can categorically rule out that any part of the NHS will be on the table in any trade negotiations including pharmaceuticals.
“This is pure Loch Ness monster, Bermuda Triangle stuff that is continued to be raised by the Labour Party for one reason only. With nine days to go, they want to distract from the fundamental heart of this election: do we want to waste next year with two more referendums — one on the EU, one on Scotland? Do you want Groundhog Day next year with Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon in charge of a chaotic parliament?
“Or do we want to go forward with an exciting, dynamic, one-nation agenda investing in massive amounts in our healthcare, investing massive amounts in infrastructure, and uniting this country?
“That’s what we want to do, but we can only do it if we get Brexit done, and we’re the only party in this election that has a plan to do that.”
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