Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Secretive TTIP will give huge corporations far-reaching powers and put profits before people.

SECRETIVE TTIP WILL GIVE HUGE CORPORATIONS FAR-REACHING NEW POWERS

Tomorrow on Thursday 15th January our MP's will debate a motion put forward by Labour MP Geraint Davies: EDM (Early Day Motion) 202 tabled in July 2014.
This is about a trade agreement known as TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) which is currently under negotiation between the EU and the USA.
However, the governments of the individual EU countries are not getting an automatic right to debate TTIP

The TTIP agreement will heavily favour profits over people because corporations will be able to secretly sue Governments if they feel that their profits are being affected by measures like food standards regulations, workers' rights, environmental protection rules and safety regulations

Big corporations will be able to sue governments because the agreement will include ISDS: Investor-State Dispute Settlements and these settlements will be held in secrecy, further undermining our democratic rights.

Geraint's EDM runs as follows:=
That this House notes that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership includes investor-state dispute settlements that are being designed in secret, so enabling multi-national companies to intimidate and sue governments for lost profits due to Government policies designed to protect the public as consumers or workers or to change the level of public ownership, that such settlements will be decided in private by arbitration panels, not in open court, that such actions and arrangements threaten to compromise the UK's established democracy, human rights and the rule of law and that the shared fruits of trade should not be at the expense of the social and economic justice that democracy demands; and therefore calls on the Government to ensure that all proposed arrangements are fully scrutinised by Parliament and that no arrangements are made which compromise established standards of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Basically Geraint Davies is calling for all proposed arrangements in connection with TTIP to be scrutinised by our own MP's here in the UK Parliament and not just by the EU, otherwise the agreement will be made and Parliament will be helpless to change it.
38 Degrees are asking people to petition their MP's ahead of the vote on Thursday 15th January 2015
Put people before profits and contact your MP today

Sally Wainman

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