BORIS Johnson claims he will tell Donald Trump face-to-face today that the NHS cannot be on the table for a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal.
The Prime Minister is due to meet the US president for talks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Johnson, who landed in the States on Sunday evening, is to commit in excess of £1 billion to initiatives to tackle the environmental crisis as the UN holds a climate summit.
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He said he will also discuss the climate crisis with Trump, who has dismissed it as a “hoax” and will reportedly miss the key summit in favour of a meeting on religious freedom. Johnson, who will also meet key EU leaders and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, said he would stress to Trump the importance of tackling environmental destruction and of not allowing the NHS to be available to the US when negotiating a free trade deal.
“I will be making the point to President Trump, a point that I’ve made many times before, that we must tackle climate change together and we must tackle the loss of species together,” Johnson said. “But I will also be saying to president Trump is that when we do a free trade deal we must make sure that the NHS is not on the table, that we do not in any way prejudice or jeopardise our standards of animal welfare or food hygiene in the course of that deal. And that we open up American markets.”
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The PM will discuss Brexit with Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Leo Varadkar and Donald Tusk.
At the climate action summit, Johnson is set to announce environmental policies over two speeches. Scientists will be able to use up to £1 billion of the aid budget inventing new technology to tackle the climate crisis in developing countries, under a clean energy fund named in honour of British physicist and suffragette Hertha Ayrton.
A further £220 million from the overseas aid budget will be used in efforts to save endangered species from extinction in an international biodiversity fund.
Johnson’s partner, Carrie Symonds, is also expected to attend the General Assembly but a senior official stressed she was travelling for her own work with environmental group Oceana and not with the PM.
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