Tories and those who voted Leave most supportive of protections for NHS in US trade bill – poll

Conservative supporters and those who voted Leave in the EU referendum are the most supportive of protections for the NHS in the US trade bill, according to new polling.

A We Own It survey conducted by Survation found 81 per cent of Tory voters agreed there should be protections for the health service compared to 12 per cent who were against them.

That’s six per cent higher than voters as a whole and seven per cent more than Labour voters.

Those who voted to leave the European Union in 2016 were also overwhelmingly in favour of protections – 84 per cent for compared to 11 per cent against.

That compares to 76 per cent of those who voted Remain saying the same thing.

Red lines in the negotiations

Last night MPs voted against an amendment designed to protect the NHS from being subject to any form of control from outside the UK in a future post-Brexit Trade Deal by 340 votes to 251.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas put forward the amendment with the support of Labour leader Keir Starmer and a number of other senior MPs.

She said: “We do not want yet more warm words and nice rhetoric, what we want are some red lines in the negotiations, and the way to get them is to write them onto the face of this Bill”.

New Clause 17

In addition to protecting the NHS from foreign control, the amendment also contained numerous other measures to protect the NHS, including:

• Ensuring the ability to provide a “comprehensive and publicly funded health service free at the point of delivery” was not compromised by any future trade deal
• Protecting hard-working NHS staff from having their wages or rights slashed by any future trade deal
• Protecting the quality and safety of health and care services
• Regulating the control and pricing of medicines
• Protecting patient data from being sold off
• Protecting the NHS from so-called investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) – clauses which allow foreign investors to sue national governments for any measures which harm their profits.

Related: Read the Russia report in full