General Election 2019: Five of desperate Jeremy Corbyn’s lies about ‘Tory plot to sell off NHS’ debunked

Here are the five wild claims Jeremy Corbyn made about Boris Johnson and the NHS, and how they were swiftly debunked.

1. That under Boris Johnson the NHS is on the table in trade talks and will be up for sale

Reality: The trade talk documents only mention the NHS four times in 450 pages, and span meetings which took place before Boris Johnson became PM.

Nowhere does it explicitly say the NHS is on the table in talks – instead it says the US is aware of the “sensitivities with the health sector in the UK” in talks.

In July this year, The Department for International Trade stated: “The NHS will never be privatised, and any future agreements will not change that.”

The Tory Manifesto states: “The NHS is not on the table. The price the NHS pays for drugs is not on the table. The services the NHS provides are not on the table.”

2. The election is a “fight for the survival of the NHS as a public service free at the point of need”:

Reality: This is a scare story which has been peddled by Labour in the election campaign, but the reality is no trade deal could do this.

As Mark Dayan, a researcher from the health think-tank the Nuffield Trust has said: “A trade deal would not have the power to stop the NHS being a free, universal service.”

3.  That trade deal could send the cost of NHS drugs soaring by £500million a week by giving US big pharma longer patents on their drugs.

Reality: Jeremy Corbyn claims the document shows the US are pushing for American drugs to have longer patents - a form of copyright which prevent cheaper versions being produced.

He says this would send the price of life-saving drugs soaring. But his claims are one-sided and numbers are overblown. The Government has insisted the price of drugs is not on the table in a trade deal.

Mr Corbyn has taken the £500m figure from a report written by Andrew Hill at Liverpool University.

But Dr Hill has admitted it is a “crude estimate”, and independent experts at the Full Fact website have branded the number “extreme and unrealistic”.

The Labour leader quoted the document, which states the “impact of some patent issues raised on NHS access to generic drugs (ie cheaper drugs) will be a key consideration going forward.”

But No10 said this passage has been wildly misinterpreted, and only showed that officials were flagging up a potential issue.

4. That privatisation of the NHS is up for discussions in trade talks:

Reality: The papers only show that the US probed Britain’s position on health insurance, but the UK officials made it clear they wouldn’t “want to discuss particular health entities”.

UK trade officials said they thought the US raised the issue as part of a “fishing expedition” and they do not “believe the US has a major offensive interest in this space”.

Boris Johnson has repeatedly insisted the NHS is not on the table in talks.

5.  That trade talks between the US and UK are “at a very advanced stage” and on the cusp of doing a deal.

Reality: This is not true. Britain remains in the EU customs union and therefore cannot start official in depth trade talks until we Brexit.

Detailed trade talks can only begin after Britain has left the EU.

1. November 2 2018 meeting between Department for International Trade and US officials. The NHS was mentioned in a public consultation on trade between the UK and other countries after Brexit about exploring a trade deal

"SB [Sophie Brice from the Department for International Trade] (UK) explained that the consultations with the public on trade with the US, New Zealand, Australia and potentially exploring CPTPP formally launched on July 20 and closed Oct 26. Privately the UK has received 160,000 responses from US consultation. Less were bespoke individual responses and many more were from campaigns which has themes that were expected based on TTIP: NHS protection, high food standards, and ISDS challenging sovereignty. The UK government will not response to every comment, but instead will publishing a government response to concerns and opportunities including how the government will consider them in future trade talks."

2. It was mentioned again at another meeting on November 5 2018 with the UK and US delegations team

"Oliver Griffiths, the Director for Americas Negotiations at the Department for International Trade, (OG) followed by updating on recent events in the UK. The UK consultation on the US, NZ, Oz and CPTPP had closed on 26 October. There had been unprecedented levels of interest with approximately 650,000 responses overall, of which 160,000 had been specific to the US. Some responses had been elated to campaigns led by NGOs, with echoes from TTIP (NHS, ISDS, food standards). There had however been over 6,000 substantive individual responses specific to the US."

3. After a meeting about intellectual property trade agenda on 14 November 2017, the NHS was noted in relation to getting access to generic drugs in future

An internal memo from the DIT reads: "The US also said that the current Administration may want a shift in some areas of policy here so they were unable to answer some of the questions we posed. It was nevertheless a very helpful exposition on the key areas we can expect the US to push in an FTA and for us to start to determine the areas where we may find ourselves in difficult territory. The impact of some patent issues raised on NHS access to generic drugs (i.e. cheaper drugs) will be a key consideration going forward. Biologics were hugely contentious under TPP so one we were interested in discussing but unclear how far apart we are in this area. Agreed that for the next Working Group we would discuss: getting a better understanding of each other’s IP systems; our respective governance processes and procedures in trade negotiations; stakeholder engagement in IP. We also agreed to come back to some of the specific issues such as GIs and pharma patents."

4. An internal document on initial trade negotiation discussions

"The query about 'health insurance' was likely a fishing expedition to check the tone of our response. We do not currently believe the US has a major offensive interest in this space – not through the SOE chapter at least. Our response dealt with this for now, but we will need to be able to go into more detail about the functioning of the NHS and our views on whether or not it is engaged in commercial activities, including through consultation with the Public Services team in TPD."

NEARLY 4million people registered to vote in the Election during an unprecedented last- minute surge in applications.

A record 660,000 people signed up in the 24 hours before the midnight deadline on Tuesday night.

In all, 3.85million people have registered since the Election was called on October 29.

Two-thirds were under 34 and just four per cent pensioners, official figures show.

The Electoral Reform Society said the total registering was nearly a third higher than before the 2017 election.

The society said it had “huge numbers of young people signing up”.

In total around 46million people are eligible to vote.