LEFT Labour MP Katy Clark piled pressure onto David Cameron yesterday to stop an EU-US trade pact from opening more public services to the private sector.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently under negotiation behind closed doors, “would let companies sue if national governments pass laws that hurt profits,” Ms Clark warned.

“This is bad news for our existing public services such as the NHS, or other services that we may wish to take back into public ownership such as the railways.

“Private companies already run certain services but under the new plans the government would never be allowed to run these again, as doing so would hurt the profits of the companies involved.”

Since talks on the content of the treaty are secret its exact content is unknown, but private firms on both sides of the Atlantic are keen to use competition rules to force open what remains of the public sector.

The North Ayrshire and Arran MP has written to the Prime Minister urging him to stand up for public services and pointing out that France won the right to continue supporting its film industry and that the US had blocked any deal on its finance sector.

“If the leaders of these countries can protect what’s important to them, then David Cameron can do the same for Britain,” Ms Clark said.

The Campaign for Public Ownership’s Neil Clark said the Labour MP’s warning was timely as people had “still not woken up to the consequences of TTIP.”

“This treaty is about enforcing the privatisation of the last services remaining in public hands,” he told the Star.

“It is fundamentally undemocratic, since though large majorities of the public are in favour of renationalising key services such as the railways or energy, subsequent governments would be unable to do so without breaking the terms of the pact.

“Labour’s recent proposals merely to let the public sector bid against private firms for service contracts shows it already sees the pact as a done deal.

“But it would impose privatisation forever and must be stopped in its tracks.”