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Save the NHS, stop TTIP: Manchester campaigners tell Cameron ‘block trade deal’

Hazel Grove residents are the latest to join thousands nationwide protesting against the ‘dangerous’ TTIP trade deal.

Voters in the south Manchester constituency have erected ‘Cameron & Hunt’ estate agency-style boards outside their homes.

The banners are part of a campaign from around 23,000 people in towns, cities and rural areas across the UK calling on David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt to use their veto powers to remove the NHS from the TTIP trade deal.

TTIPs are trade deals arranged between the EU and United States, which aim to break down regulatory barriers for big businesses.

The threat from TTIPs could come from settlements that give private companies the license to sue nations if they enact laws that limit a corporation’s profit-making ability.

Ray Tallis, spokesperson for Stockport NHS Watch, said: “Thousands of households are joining an unprecedented nationwide movement to demand David Cameron uses his veto to get the NHS out of TTIP.

“People across England, Wales and Scotland are delivering a clear message by raising ‘stop the sale signs’ outside their homes.

“Voters in Hazel Grove love the NHS and hate TTIP. That’s why we expect our MP Andrew Stunnell to use his position to put pressure on David Cameron to act.

“David Cameron never told us on the campaign trail in 2010 that his party was going to embark on the mass privatisation of the NHS and he certainly does not have a mandate to allow the sell-off of the NHS to become permanent.”

Residents across the UK from Battersea to Broxtowe have installed the signs outside their houses to petition their MPs to vote against the deal.

INTERACTIVE MAP: MM’s map below shows the MPs across the UK who are being lobbied to block TTIP and ‘save the NHS’. 

Green Party candidate for Manchester Central, Kieran Turner-Dave, warned MM in December the dangers of TTIP.

He said: “This is not democracy, it’s selling domestic policy to the highest US bidder. TTIP is a threat to every nation in Europe.

“Our public sector services will be stripped to the bone in a corporate power grab of unprecedented proportions.

“Foreign tax-dodging corporations would decide domestic policy without being held accountable.”

Brian Colman, spokesperson for The People’s NHS, the organisation behind the campaign, said: “Thousands of households across the UK are delivering a clear message by raising ‘stop the sale signs’ outside their homes in protest over the sell-off of their health services and David Cameron’s refusal to veto the NHS from the dangerous trade deal called TTIP.

“This is a clear message to our MP and to the government that it’s time to take the for sale sign down from our hospitals and GP services and put our cherished NHS back into public hands.”

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