MADAM - Neil Carmichael writing in the Stroud News & Journal expresses his support for the free trade agreement that is currently being negotiated between the EU and USA and suggests that families could be £400 per year better off.

The price paid for this supposed monetary benefit however could be enormous.

Negotiations are being carried on behind closed doors and the only real beneficiaries are likely to be large transnational corporations including the likes of Monsanto, the big pharmaceutical companies and oil companies hoping to start fracking.

These companies are demanding de-regulation.

Hard won European legislation to protect consumers could disappear overnight including the requirements to label genetically modified foods, prevent imports of hormone treated beef and protect the environment.

A long list of further social, economic and environmental rules benefitting ordinary people could be swept away too.

Setting up a free trade area between the world’s richest trading blocks is also in effect putting up a trade barrier against the rest of the world – surely anathema even to supporters of free trade.

If this trade agreement is approved it could spell disaster.

Neil Carmichael and his colleague MPs would do well to study the proposal in detail and demand to know what is being negotiated in secret and for whose benefit, before expressing such open-ended support.

Bernard Jarman

Stroud