EU: Government Amazon State aid in NHS deal is causing concerns

The UK’s Government has been accused of breaching State aid rules by allowing Amazon to have access to public national health service (NHS) data for free.

A letter, seen by the PA news agency, shows that a formal complaint has been lodged with the EU Commission, claiming that the arrangement is “excessive” for the reasons Amazon has given for using the information.

Jolyon Maugham QC, a prominent anti-Brexit campaigner and founder of the Good Law Project, wrote the letter which was sent on Wednesday, December 11, claiming the tech giant should have paid for access.

“Amazon gets a leg up in the hugely valuable healthcare sector. But what’s in it for us? Our Government should have charged Amazon for the data but it didn’t. I’m making this complaint so that the EU Commission forces Amazon to pay up” said Maugham.

He said, “We know from secret recordings that the Government lent on the tax authorities to go easy on Amazon. It now looks like it is also giving Amazon, worldwide, forever, irrevocably and royalty-free, a licence to all of the NHS’s healthcare information.

“Amazon gets a leg up in the hugely valuable healthcare sector. But what’s in it for us? Our Government should have charged Amazon for the data but it didn’t. I’m making this complaint so that the EU Commission forces Amazon to pay up.”

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