Undermining (From Penarth Times)

Undermining

FEW READERS may know that decisions are to be taken during the next month which will radically undermine the power of local government with regard to its procurement of services, its planning powers and its regulation of health and safety and care for the environment.

The decisions to be taken arise from negotiations about the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva.

The Department of Trade and Industry has arranged a consultation which ends of January 3, but because of Christmas and the new year, it will effectively end by mid-December.

The United States has requested access to health, education and social services in European countries.

You may think that these services are outside the realm of investment for profit. Not so.

Wherever parts of the services are privatised, as for example through private finance initiatives, or sub-contracting, or through the handing-over of "failing schools" to corporations, they will, if these negotiations go through, be open to foreign capital on terms which will challenge current regulations.

I have papers from the Local Government International Bureau and from the World Development Movement, which make the concerns outlined above only too real.

We are rapidly moving into a situation where our vote will be even more meaningless when regulations which have put the care of citizens before financial profit, become swept aside by rules which favour corporations.

Find out more from the WDM website www.wdm.org.uk and contact councillors, AMs and MPs to ask them to make a stand about this.

Once a GATS request is agreed, it becomes virtually irreversible.

Phil Kingston St Luke's Avenue Penarth