Tell your MEP: Don’t give corporations the power to sue our government

Next Thursday, there’s a crunch vote on the TTIP trade deal in the European parliament. AA committee of MEPs will be voting, and could decide to stop big corporations getting the power to sue our government if they don’t like our laws. [1]

If the vote goes the way the giant corporations want, businesses will get even more power to call the shots over our government:

• American tobacco companies could sue our government in secret courts to stop attempts to reduce cancer rates from smoking
• Huge corporations could claim billions in compensation if we raise the minimum wage [2]

There are only 5 politicians from the UK who will be voting next week – so every vote counts. William Dartmouth, the UKIP MEP, is one of the politicians with a vote, and it looks like he’s on the fence about what he’s going to do. [3]

William Dartmouth isn’t your MEP, but you can still help to make sure he votes the right way. Right now, 38 Degrees members across the UK are emailing our UKIP MEPs, asking them to persuade their colleague William Dartmouth to vote the right way. Hearing from the people he works with every day could be enough to tip the balance.

Please can you send a quick email to your MEPs and ask them to persuade William Dartmouth to vote the right way?

EMAIL YOUR MEP

Together, we can make sure that William Dartmouth hears from his colleagues from across the UK: all urging him to vote for the people he represents, not big business. It could give him the confidence to lead a rebellion of MEPs to all vote against giving companies new powers.

Corporations already have too much power over our democracy. For the sake of our health service, for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our environmental protections – TTIP just has to be stopped.

Together, 38 Degrees members could make sure that every time William Dartmouth’s phone rings, it’s another MEP telling him to vote the right way. We only have a few days – please can you email your MEPs now? There’s some suggested email text to get you started, so it’ll only take two minutes:

EMAIL YOUR MEP

Thanks for being involved,

It’s a crunch vote on the most dangerous part of the EU-US trade deal called TTIP. The deal is being hashed out in secret, and if it passes, big business will get even more power to call the shots with our government. They’d be able to buy up precious public services – and even sue us in secret courts if they lost profits.

But the good news is that UK MEPs have a vote next Thursday to stop this. At the moment, the vote could go either way. So if our MEPs hear from thousands of us now, we could break the hesitation and push them to vote the right way next week.

Please can you send your MEP a quick email asking them to tell their colleagues to vote for people, not big business?

Click here to contact your MEP.