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For
Immediate Release: Thursday
13th March 2003
Photo Opportunity: 0930h Paradise Forum, outside the Copthorne Hotel - protesters dressed as dodgy-dealing businessmen with a For Sale board showing public services up for grabs.
Sale!! All
West Midlands' Public Services
Water!
Education! Health Care! Energy! Everything Must Go
Environmental and trade justice activists will today stage a protest to expose GATS - a secret international trade agreement hatched by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva that will hand all control of essential local services in the West Midlands over to big business.
Campaigners from the World Development Movement (WDM), People and Planet and Birmingham Friends of the Earth will converge on the Government Office for the West Midlands (1) to demand the UK Government end its support for GATS - the General Agreement on Trade in Services (2). The protest is part of a European day of action against GATS and similar protests will be taking place outside every Regional Government Office in the country.
The public will be invited to see for themselves at a grand display board depicting vital services such as water, sanitation, and electricity as "for sale", while menacing businessmen will vie with the protesters. The campaigners will then present their concerns in writing to Graham Garbutt, regional Director of Government Office for the West Midlands.
Jenny Thatcher of Birmingham Friends of the Earth said:
"GATS threatens
public services and the poor whilst offering a bargain basement deal to big
business. We all rely on basic services such as clean water, health, education
and public transport - for many they make the difference between life and death.
GATS favours multinational companies who put profits before people and the environment.
But we elect councillors and MPs to make decisions about how local public services
are provided, not groups of international lawyers and trade negotiators."
Editor's Notes
(1) The Regional Government Office at Paradise Circus Queensway was chosen because they play an increasingly central role in economic planning.
(2) Along with other members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Britain signed up to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in 1994. Negotiations to extend the agreement restart at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva on 21 March 2003.
The agreement applies to all levels of government - local, regional and national, and covers 160 service sectors. It extends the free trade principles of the WTO from trade in goods to include trade in services. GATS will have a profound effect on all governments' ability to regulate their service economy and on the potential of poor countries to receive benefits from foreign investment in their service sectors. Recent leaks of key documents show that previous promises that the EU would not "request" opening up basic services like water in the developing world have, disturbingly, not been honoured.
GATS has unexplored implications for rich and poor governments' ability to provide affordable and accessible public services. The EC's website describes GATS as "first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business."
At Westminster, 262 MPs from all the main parties have signed an Early Day Motion calling for an "independent and thorough assessment" of the impact of this important and far-reaching agreement on key services in the UK and in developing countries.
On December 23rd 2002 eight UK General Secretaries, including those of Unison, TGWU, CWU and NATFHE wrote a public letter to the Guardian expressing their concern about the impact of GATS on health, education, transport, broadcasting and postal services. They called for a halt to GATS negotiations, describing them as "reckless and undemocratic".
More information
on GATS, including a media briefing, is available from the WDM national press
office on 020 7274 7630 or on the web at www.wdm.org.uk