Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the Government said in correspondence to Bindmans LLP on 24 April 2015 that a blanket ban on homeopathic products would simply be unreasonable and disproportionate.

In correspondence to the Department of Health of February and April 2015, Bindmans LLP asked the Government for a blanket ban on the National Health Service prescribing of homeopathic products. Bindmans LLP argued for this on the basis of the costs of these products to the NHS and that homeopathic products were borderline substances.

In its April 2015 reply to Bindmans LLP, a Government official replied to explain that homeopathic products were, in fact, legally defined as medicines and the cost of homeopathic products in NHS primary care was small and reducing. Given this, we considered Bindmans LLP justification for their proposed ban as legally unreasonable and disproportionate.