READING your article, 'Corbyn: NHS will be on the table', 28th November, I have been trying to work out who I believe, Corbyn or Johnson. Weighing up the balance of probability has helped me decide.

Firstly, if we leave the EU on Johnson's deal, our need to be free of WTO rules will mean we will be desperate for a trade deal with the USA. In a weak negotiating position all the cards will be in the hands of the Trump team. Many of those cards will have American pharmaceutical companies written all over them.

Big American pharma want access to the lucrative NHS budget. Will Trump will ignore their interests? Extending the patents on American drugs, making them more expensive for the NHS for a long period of time would make sense to the Americans: huge profits for the USA would be the prize.

Secondly we know that the Tories have an ideological belief in paying private companies to provide essential public services: they have steadily awarded contracts to a variety of private providers across the public sector.

Given the political power of American health providers, will Trump, knowing our desperation for a trade deal, not insist that these companies should be able to bid for contracts to run surgeries, ambulance services and provide treatments in hospitals? Again more of the NHS budget going to profit American companies.

Johnson might be telling the truth to say that talks allowing American companies to provide NHS services have not been put on the table, (although I believe allowing their drug companies access is true) but this does not mean they won't be once the pressure of WTO rules start to bite.

Finally I know how willingly Johnson uses carefully crafted sentences to duck questions and duck the truth.

The balance of probabilities forces me to believe Corbyn: the NHS will not be safe in Johnson's post Brexit trade deals.

Jane Burnet

Address supplied