NHS? The EU has already put it up for grabs

Two grunts have been emerging from the ill-educated Remain sector over the past few days – ‘NHS’ and ‘Chlorinated chicken’. I guess like most silly Remain prejudices, these fears are born of ignorance and the mendacity of those who know better stirring up the pot.

Firstly, every supply, service or works contract for the NHS above a threshold value must currently, under EU law, be offered to every eligible firm in Europe. Threshold values are currently £181k for all supplies and services and £4.5m for works contracts. Search the OJEU database as I have just done, for NHS tenders, and it will return 514 pages of results, 34 contracts on offer from just yesterday alone, including the vasectomy service in Bristol and the pathology service in Worcester;

Now if a medical firm from Romania can bid to snip the testicles of Bristol’s men, why not one from Boston or LA? If a Hungarian path lab operator can bid to analyse oncology samples in Worcester, why not one from Virginia or New England?

There’s no rule that says contracts have to be awarded out of the UK – only that the bid evaluation process is open, fair and transparent (until you get to stuff over £20m or so – which is where EU corrupt practices, kickbacks, EU organised crime involvement and so on kick in) and Bristol’s vas deferens could easily end up being severed under hands that have travelled no further than a few miles from Avon.

Nor is there any rule that medical services performed in-house by the NHS’ 106,000 doctors, 286,000 nurses or 22,000 midwives in commissioning groups, trusts and GP practices should be up for grabs – and no UK/US trade agreement will act to involuntarily privatise the NHS – God knows, the EU have been trying to do this for years without success. Just that instead of / in addition to EU firms bidding for contracted-out sevices and the supply of materials and equipment, US firms can also do so.

As for chlorinated chicken, well, if you’ve bought a ready-to-eat salad pack from your local supermarket in the past few days, you will have eaten chlorinated lettuce, in many cases using  chlorine wash stronger than that used to rinse Septic chickens.

So the Remainers can carry on grunting – hollow pots and so on.