The attached letter was posted to all UK MPs on Monday.

Please contact your MP about GATS *now* to reinforce its message.

You could also use this as an opportunity to raise GATS with your local council, and get a statement into the local media. It might be worth contacting the local branch of the Womens Institute (phone their headquarters on 0207 371 9300 to find your nearest branch) and doing some joint campaigning, arranging to speak at one of their meetings,
issue a joint press release to the local media etc.




Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom (UK Section)
37 Hollingworth Road
Petts wood Orpington
BR5 1AQ
tel. no. 020 8467 5367

National Federation of
Women's Institutes
104 New Kings Road
London SW6 4LY
tel. no. 0207 371 9300


March 2002

Dear

General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Negotiations on the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are continuing and are at a key stage.

Services that nation states, and the EU, are requesting other states to liberalise must be specified by June 30th this year, and the deadline for offers of services to be liberalised is March 31st 2003.

Once national Governments enter into commitments to liberalise services, it is extremely difficult to reverse those commitments. The GATS Secretariat has described commitments as 'effectively irreversible'.

This places serious restrictions on the powers of national and local government to regulate in the public interest.

Although some Governments have denied that public services will be included, the wording of the Agreement indicates that very little, in the area of public services will, in fact, be exempt.


The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (UK Section) and the National Federation of Women's Institutes are extremely concerned about the irreversible and wide-sweeping nature of the Agreement, and particularly how the liberalisation of social services will impact on women, both as citizens and as workers.

We are also concerned about the lack of any impact assessment, or of any safeguard clause, both of which were supposed to be included according to the original framework Agreement, signed in 1994.

We particularly want to ask you:

- to state clearly what commitments the Government has already made under GATS

- what services the UK, as part of the European Union will be requesting from other states

- what services the UK will unilaterally be requesting

- what services the UK, as part of the European Union, will be offering for liberalisation?

- what services the UK will unilaterally be offering

- how the full implementation of the GATS will affect public services in this country, for instance education, and the health service

We would be very grateful for a response to our questions on this very important matter.

Yours sincerely