MANY people are involved in local campaigns to protect the NHS, oppose fracking or tackle fuel poverty.

The EU is secretly negotiating a trade deal with the US which would affect all of these issues and more.

If the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is agreed it will give big business the right to sue the UK government over legislation that they believe might reduce their profits.

This would mean a future government could be sued for trying to return the NHS to full public ownership. It would make a freeze on energy prices, proposed by some politicians, difficult, if not impossible to achieve. And it would lead to a fracking boom, as more and more fracked gas is imported into Britain.

Awareness of the dangers of the deal is growing, and groups like the World Development Movement are coming together to oppose it. I hope readers will share my concerns and join the campaign.

Colin Luckett, Sedbergh.

FOLLOWING the food scandals of recent years, people are becoming much more aware of what goes into our food. The last thing we need is lower legal standards, but a deal being negotiated between the EU and the US could result in exactly that.

The EU-US trade deal aims to ‘harmonise’ European and American rules in food safety and many other areas, which in practice may mean slashing European standards to match the much lower US levels.

So, products like hormonetreated beef and pork, and chicken washed in chlorine, sold by US companies but currently banned here, could appear on supermarket shelves in the UK.

Food is just one area in which this deal would give multinational companies much more influence in our lives. Healthcare and education are among the others.

The deal threatens our ability to run our society in the way we choose, and it must be stopped.

S Andrew, Selby.