Healthcare: East Midlands

Debate between David Tredinnick and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for allowing me to speak first. I think it is the first time I have heard a Chair say that there is no time constraint, but I will not detain the House for too long. At the risk of being called to order, I had planned to raise the work that you have done for Kettering General Hospital and your impassioned demands for improvements to it over the years, which no doubt the Minister has listened to many times. I was with some friends last week who said, “Ah, Northamptonshire. That’s the Bones—Peter and Philip—isn’t it?” Kettering General Hospital came up. At the risk of being called to order—I do not see you doing that—let me say what a good job you have done for that hospital. As was said in the Chamber this week, your whole identity in the House is linked to the work you have done there.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) on securing not just half an hour but an hour and a half in what used to be called the Grand Committee Room but is now Westminster Hall. She spoke passionately and with detailed knowledge, as a former nurse, about the problems in her area. I listened to her speech, and I have sympathy with what she said about some of the consolidation that has taken place, but inevitably there have to be some changes and rationalisations in the health service.

I will talk mainly about the changes in the great town of Hinckley, in my west Leicestershire constituency of Bosworth, which is some way from Lincoln. We were very fortunate that the Secretary of State himself—ipse—recently came to Hinckley to look at the changes that will be made thanks to the £8 million grant that has been secured for upgrading the facilities in Hinckley. Mayur Lakhani, the chair of the West Leicestershire clinical commissioning group, spoke warmly about the way the Secretary of State had responded to their bid, and the support of Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, which happens to be Conservative-controlled, and which I will refer to later.

I was lucky to be elected to this House a long time ago—in fact, so long ago that I sometimes forget the date. I have been a Member for more than 30 years, and the one health issue that has bedevilled my constituency above all others in that period is what to do with the Mount Road hospital—the old hospital in the middle of Hinckley. Because of the £8 million grant that the Secretary of State awarded to the clinical commissioning group, we are now able to make some substantial changes to the health improvements in Hinckley. Given your interest in Kettering General Hospital, Mr Hollobone, you will understand my joy at seeing the improvements that are about to take place—consultations are going on at the moment.

I have a letter from the West Leicestershire clinical commissioning group setting out exactly where we are now. It says that the investment supports plans to provide modern, fit-for-purpose facilities, and more services in the local community and closer to home in Hinckley. I say to the hon. Member for Lincoln that part of that will be about shutting down old facilities. One is a portakabin and another is the old hospital. In exchange, the investment will make better use of all available existing space in Hinckley Health Centre on Hill Street, not far from the old hospital, and Hinckley and Bosworth Community Hospital, which we call Sunnyside because it is on a hill and gets the sun all day long—it is a marvellous place for a hospital.

As part of the £8 million package, the Hinckley Health Centre will be refurbished to accommodate X-ray, ultrasound and physiotherapy, and to increase the number of consulting rooms, which is extremely important. Out-of-hours primary care services will be relocated from Hinckley and Bosworth Community Hospital—Sunnyside—to the newly developed urgent care hub in the Hinckley Health Centre, which will provide out-of-hours urgent care for local patients. A combined day case surgery and endoscopy unit with day case beds will be created. That will provide an increased range of day case procedures and cancer screening services for local patients. We will be removing services from the old Hinckley and District Hospital and the physiotherapy portakabin, which are unfortunately not fit for purpose, and physiotherapy services will be relocated to Hinckley Health Centre.

As I have the luxury of time, I say to people who have campaigned for years to save the old Hinckley and District Hospital that as it is such an old building, upgrading the hospital to the highest standards would require a phenomenal amount of work at a very high cost, with a low return on investment because all the special cables now have to be run with special conduits for oxygen and monitoring. It simply cannot be done efficiently in such an old structure. Although many of my constituents will have an emotional attachment to the old hospital, the decision that has been taken by the clinical commissioning group is right: it needed to close. In exchange, we are now getting an £8 million grant, which will provide much better facilities. As I mentioned earlier, some of the facilities are coming into the town from the outskirts—from Sunnyside to the health centre. It is quite an achievement.

We were lucky to get the grant of £8 million. My father always said to me that you generate your own luck in life, which is true. In this case, one of the drivers that made it possible for the Department and Secretary of State to agree to the clinical commissioning group’s bid was the extraordinary co-operation in west Leicestershire between the different service providers, particularly in Hinckley in my constituency.

At the beginning of the 2005 Parliament, I was lucky enough to get elected to the Health Committee under the new procedures. Subsequently, I chaired it for a short time. When I was elected to the Committee, I asked the then leader of the council, “Would you like me to come and talk about health on a regular basis?” It was agreed that I would, and that developed into a health and wellbeing partnership, which meets quarterly with the clinical commissioning group; the director of public health for Leicestershire County Council, Mike Sands; and senior officers at Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, including Bill Cullen, Simon Jones, Councillor Maureen Cook and many other excellent Conservative councillors over time. We also have doctors from the local surgeries attend.

Over a period of some years, we saw the meeting change from participants sitting with their arms folded and leaning back, to sitting up and listening attentively. We have learned to work together, and the partnership has been leakproof—there is nothing to gain from talking outside. We have had an extraordinary degree of co-operation, and I am absolutely convinced that it has improved the health services in my constituency and the county as a whole. It has reduced costs and brought up a whole a range of new ideas, some of which I shall go through today. The work of the secondary provider, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, has been really remarkable and hugely encouraging, and it is something that all local people in my constituency can be proud of. Leicestershire County Council has done a good job, too, but I am particularly proud of what Hinckley and Bosworth has done through its health and wellbeing partnership—its contribution to health delivered through that partnership.

It might be instructive if I run through some of the areas that Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has worked on. I am pleased to see the Minister of State in his place rather than a Parliamentary Under-Secretary; he is the deputy of the Secretary of State. It illustrates how seriously the Government take the issue of health funding in the east midlands. I want to share with him what is going on in Hinckley. First, I reiterate that we have a local delivery of preventive services through co-operation. I mentioned the councils, but we also talk to the voluntary and community sector. We have patient participation groups, school participation groups and elderly patient participation groups.

The information pyramid is broad-based, and the lines of communication are fluid. Information can come from the bottom to the top very easily. From those ideas, the Conservative-controlled Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has produced a comprehensive prevention strategy, which sets out the work that the authority will undertake with its partners. The first objective is to prevent issues from escalating by taking action as early as possible. The second is to reduce demand for high-cost services and dependency on statutory services, thereby making spending more efficient.

Another objective is to develop self-help approaches to enable communities to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, which is something that the Department of Health and Social Care worked on under the Secretary of State’s predecessor, and the Health Committee in the 2005 Parliament looked at personal budgets and how they work. It was about getting people to think about their own health. With an ageing population, that is one of the areas that really must be brought to the fore in the future. However much money we ask for the NHS, we will never have enough supply of resources to meet demand unless we encourage people to take greater care of themselves. In this respect, the initiatives that Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has taken are hugely important in encouraging people to do that.

I will come on to what the council has done in a moment, but the overall aim of the strategy is to ensure that, together with its key partners, the council enables communities—especially people who are most at risk—to keep safe, keep well, stay independent and enjoy life. To support those aims and achieve those objectives, the council provides integrated locality teams, which identify and support people in a more co-ordinated way, focusing on two specific areas. The first is:

“Proactive identification via risk stratification of patients (18+, frail, multiple LTCs) at risk of a hospital admission and assessing the ‘whole person’ and their needs to keep them safe and well at home where it is appropriate to do so.”

I quote from this document—“whole person”—because a key thrust of health policy in the future should be holistic healthcare, which has become slightly muddled up and seen as definitely not mainstream. Actually, it should be at the core of the mainstream, treating the patient as a whole. I will come on to long-term care and conditions when I discuss the Health Committee’s report, “Managing the care of people with long-term conditions”, which I signed off as Chairman.

In Hinckley and Bosworth, we have a council that is proactively segmenting the population to treat people who are most in need as priorities, which I absolutely applaud. It also does that through the use of health ambassadors, who are

“uniformed volunteers who support and encourage people to get more active more often. They undertake this by playing to their strengths. Some give presentations, some lead activities, some encourage and support new participants on current schemes. Some are happy to have a coffee after an activity and talk to new participants. The big thing is they are positive role models who are empathetic with people and can support them to change and be more active in a way that is natural and comfortable to them.”

The programme is particularly effective when dealing with older people. In my beautiful constituency, Desford sports centre provides classes for elderly people, to keep them active. They have a chance to talk to experts—not doctors particularly, but sports therapists. They can play table tennis, sit down and do quizzes, play tennis—there is even tennis for people who are disabled. The whole idea is to get people who are a bit tired of life, or a bit sad by themselves, to meet other people and to engage in activities, thereby making them happier and healthier, and reducing the burden on the health service.

We are trying to divert away from A&E—the Leicester Royal Infirmary has one of the highest patient inputs in the country relative to its geographical footprint. I will not talk about the royal infirmary and the wonderful work of its health workers, but when the chair of the clinical commissioning group came to see what we were doing in Desford—on another visit, without the Secretary of State—we saw the Steady Steps programme. It is a 24-week free postural and stability exercise programme for older adults, aimed at those aged 65 and over who are at risk of falling, unsteady on their feet, lacking in confidence or likely to lose their balance.

One therapy that the sports centre is not employing, but to which I should like to draw the House’s attention, is the Alexander technique, which I have used in the past. Alexander was an opera singer, and he found that he could not sing. Part of the problem was that his chest was constricted all the time, so he could not project his voice—something that politicians are also quite keen to do at time when on the soapbox, if they can ever get there. Alexander discovered that breathing was connected to posture, and most people do not stand correctly with their hips as part of their back; they tend to have a break and swivel around the second and third lumbar vertebrae. He managed to get people to stand correctly to get their weight right. With their weight right, their lungs could perform properly. Those techniques, which have been developed by experts over the years, should be looked at carefully by the Department of Health and Social Care, but I will come to ways that we can take pressure off the Department generally.

Through the Steady Steps programme, it is so exciting and empowering to see elderly people who have become immobile actually get back into the community. Some of them have mental health problems, and Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has an active mental health support programme with five main objectives. They are to create networks to co-ordinate comprehensive and integrated mental health services in the community; to implement activities and events for promotion and early intervention and prevention in mental health; to improve awareness of mental health issues among children and young people, so that they do not think it strange that an older person is perhaps not as with it as they were in their 20s; to improve mental health and the impacts in the workplace; and to improve the quality of life of people living with dementia, and of their families and carers.

That is not rocket science; it explains to people simple facts of life about health. The programme brings the community together—it is a project that speaks to cohesion—makes it less likely that people will be upset by the behaviour of other people, and enables instructors to identify core problems. In the Hinckley and Bosworth area, we have over 6,500 dementia friends and 40 dementia champions. That is a lot of people in a constituency of 100,000 with 70,000 electors, and a very serious intervention.

Suicide is another issue that we as MPs deal with regularly. Most colleagues will have had cases in their surgeries about which they have had to approach care agencies. Leicestershire and Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council have taken very decisive steps, with the Start a Conversation suicide prevention campaign for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. The Start a Conversation website was launched on 10 September to coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day, and aims to provide information and signposting to people who are experiencing distress, to those worried about someone else, or those bereaved by suicide. The website is still in development, but will offer support and training to professionals.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Whether we are discussing healthcare in the east midlands or in Northern Ireland, the issue of suicide is prominent in my constituency. When I became its MP in 2010, the level of suicide among young people was at its highest. That was dealt with through the involvement of community groups and of people in the community who had lost loved ones. There was also interaction with church groups and those of faith. By coming together, we reduced the incidence of suicide, and by working alongside healthcare in Northern Ireland, which is a devolved matter, we found that together, we could address the issue. It took both the community and healthcare to make that happen.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Before Mr Tredinnick responds, I remind the Chamber that there is half an hour of Back-Bench time left, with two other Members seeking to contribute.

Homeopathy: Veterinary Medicine

Debate between David Tredinnick and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

This debate is very timely because of the recent changes that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has made to its guidelines, which have angered the public and homeopathic vets alike and triggered two marches to the headquarters of the RCVS and a rally in Parliament Square, at which I had the honour of speaking. I am happy to see the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), in his place, not least because my family come from Redruth and were mining engineers—I am attempting to engender a little sympathy from him before I proceed.

The key issue is a new requirement in the guidelines that homeopathy should only be used in conjunction with conventional medicine. The second issue is the highly contentious assertions made by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons about a lack of evidence and safety and animal welfare, which are apparently related in this instance. The third issue is a lack of consultation.

The RCVS did not consult at all the people who know the subject—the Faculty of Homeopathy, the British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons, the International Association for Veterinary Homeopathy, the European Committee for Homeopathy and the Homeopathy Research Institute. None of those organisations was consulted prior to the issuing of these guidelines. After the second march, the RCVS graciously agreed to meet a delegation, but sadly the delegation wrote to me afterwards saying:

“It became apparent that there was a total lack of understanding of the principles of homeopathy.”

It invited the RCVS to visit a practice, but I am not sure that that offer has been accepted.

I wrote to the RCVS, and it replied to my letter with, I regret to say, three glaring errors. First, it cited the 2010 report of the Science and Technology Committee, which it said

“concluded that the evidence base shows that homeopathy is not efficacious”.

It never did anything of the sort. I attended that Committee, and it was an evidence check. It only found that there was no evidence; it did not make any findings about effectiveness.

Secondly, the RCVS claims:

“we have not sought to remove choice as this remains”.

It does not. Choice has been removed, because before these guidelines came out, homeopaths could practise without using homeopathy and conventional medicine together.

Thirdly, the RCVS made claims about animal welfare issues. This is very important, and I asked a parliamentary question, to which my hon. Friend the Minister graciously replied:

“The Department does not have any evidence that shows that homeopathic vets are a risk to animal welfare by using homeopathy as an alternative treatment to conventional medicine options.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I sought the hon. Gentleman’s permission to intervene, and I thank him for letting me do so. Does he not agree that with the rise in antibiotic use in animals—it is very pertinent at this time—anything that can prevent the introduction of antibiotics can only be a good thing and must be given full consideration? Perhaps the Minister could tell us in his response what he is doing through his Department to reduce antibiotic use in animals.

[David Tredinnick]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with wisdom and experience. No doubt, he too has looked at the European position, which is completely the opposite of the one taken by the RCVS. There is a European directive on organic products, which states in article 24(2) of Commission regulation (EC) No. 889/2008, that

“Phytotherapeutic”—

that is, herbal—

“and homeopathic products, trace elements…shall be used in preference to chemically-synthesised allopathic veterinary treatment or antibiotics”.

That was because the European Union as a whole was so worried about the abuse of antibiotics, and I started speaking about the use of antibiotics in animals in the 1987 Parliament.

Let me give my hon. Friend the Minister the view of a farmer, who wrote to me, saying

“did you know that farmers often like using homeopathy for cows with mastitis because if they do so, they can sell the milk. If they use antibiotics, the milk must be thrown out.”

Safety is very important, and I hope the Minister will dispose of that point later as some homeopathic vets have simply stopped practising because they perceive themselves to be under a legal threat.

This is at a time when, according to the British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons, there is an explosion of interest in homeopathy, largely I would suggest because of the antibiotics problem. It says that

“there is an explosion of interest in CAM”—

complementary and alternative medicine—

“including Homeopathy”, in the agricultural sector where the drive is to reduce and replace dependence on antibiotics in light of Antibiotic Resistance…concerns”.

Homeopathy and the NHS

Debate between David Tredinnick and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Tredinnick]

The right hon. Gentleman, who has been in the House as long as I have, has made a good point. There is scientific evidence out there, although we could use more. One of the problems is that, when scientific evidence is produced, it is pooh-poohed. However, that does not stop people using, for example, arnica cream when they get wounds. It is a standard preparation and it is a homeopathic medicine. So there is a degree of need for more studies, but there are studies out there that are ignored.

I have said homeopathy is the second biggest medical system in the world. Some would say it is the most prestigious. It has always been held in very high regard by people who are widely respected. It is no secret that the royal family and many celebrities have used homeopathic medicine over the years. It has become increasingly important in an age when drug dependency is epidemic and when there are serious worries about the effectiveness of antibiotics.

The homeopathic private sector is growing fast not only in this country, Europe and America, but everywhere. However, in the NHS, we are under attack from people in the medical establishment. This goes back to 2005, when a letter was put out attacking homeopathic services in the health service. It was actually a bogus letter on NHS letterhead. The Countess of Mar and Lord Palmer asked a question about it and the reply acknowledged that

“this document was not issued with the knowledge or approval of the Department of Health and that the use of the National Health Service logo was inappropriate in this instance. The document does not represent any central policy on the commissioning of homoeopathy”.

Anti-homeopathy groups such as the so-called Good Thinking Society, which is a front for one individual, a sceptic called Simon Singh, are threatening clinical commissioning groups with legal action for commissioning homeopathy. People such as Simon Singh are anti-patient, anti-choice and closed-minded individuals who have never studied or used homeopathy. In the UK, we have a robust system of homeopathic regulation. We have the Faculty of Homeopathy, which was formed in the 1950s for doctors. Doctors are, of course, regulated by the General Medical Council as well. In 2015, the Professional Standards Authority took on oversight of the regulation of the 2,000 members of the Society of Homeopaths. Such enhanced regulation is important and is a good reason why homeopathy should be more greatly available in the health service.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Tredinnick]

I will give way to my hon. Friend from Northern Ireland.

[Jim Shannon]

It is always good to have debates on anything to do with health, but particularly with homeopathy. There have been several reviews of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of homeopathy. Indeed, this House had a report in 2010, which the Minister will be aware of, from the Science and Technology Committee. In my constituency of Strangford is a major shop in Newtownards that deals in nothing else but homeopathy medicine, which clearly shows a demand. Does the hon. Gentleman feel it is perhaps now time for the Government to look at homeopathy in a new light because of the demand that there is, and also to see what homeopathy can offer?

[David Tredinnick]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. There is insanity about this subject. The amount of money spent on homeopathic prescriptions in the health service is about £110,000 per annum. So why are those who are against it so fanatically against it? What is it that gives them the swivel-eyed look? Why do they take so much trouble to rub out an alternative at a time when the mantra of the Government is patient choice? It is quite bemusing. Many of the patients that go to homeopaths have contraindications to pharmaceutical drugs, or chronic illnesses that have not been helped by conventional medicines. I say to the Minister that there are no cost savings to be made by banning homeopathic prescriptions, as patients will still need other interventions instead. The Government should assess how much money the health service has spent on other interventions for these patients before the successful use of homeopathic medicine.

If we look around the world, we see a much more developed landscape. In France, 70% of pregnant women use homeopathy. You can go to any chemist in France and find homeopathic preparations and chemists who are qualified to talk about them. If we go further afield, I particularly like the example of India where there is a Ministry for complementary medicine called the Ministry of AYUSH—the “H” in AYUSH stands for homeopathic medicine. I will say a little about that later.

We have already discussed evidence and there is always a need for good studies. There was a study in France, which I sent to the Secretary of State a long time ago for consideration by the chief medical officer. I have not had a reply yet, although I accosted him about it in the Division Lobby this week. A bullet-proof study named EPI3, which looks at the integration of homeopathy into general practice in France, showed positive outcomes, as does a randomised double-blind, double-dummy, multi-centre, non-inferiority clinical trial, which covers everything possible to follow the protocol, looking at the effect of an echinacea-based hot drink versus oseltamivir in influenza treatment. There are also promising indications that homeopathy could be helpful in combating the increasing problem of antimicrobial resistance. That is an example of a good study. I will come back to the EPI3 study.

The attacks on homoeopathy in the NHS come pretty much from one person. They come from an organisation called the Good Thinking Society, a charity that is not supposed to campaign for changes in the health service, but its website states that it wants to raise money because it

“Helps us campaign against the funding of homeopathy”.

According to the website, its leader, the Good Thinking Society’s chairman, largely funds the whole operation and another charity. It launched an attack on the Liverpool homeopathic service to shut it down, and eventually it was shut down. It worked like this. There was a consultation for local people at the end of 2015, at which I had a representative. Some 90% of those present were in favour of retaining or extending the service. Voting was by secret ballot, using hand-held remote controls, and 90% were in favour. One lady present, who suffered from a range of chronic conditions that conventional medicine had been unable to treat, was close to tears. She said that the only thing that had allowed her to live a relatively normal life was homeopathy. She pleaded with the clinical commissioning group not to cut the homeopathy service.

The next stage was a formal consultation open to everybody, with no restriction by area and no checking of who was contributing. That consultation found 73% against keeping the homeopathic service. It is my belief that that consultation was hijacked by the Good Thinking Society—that it got people to call in and distort the result. The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Andrew Smith) and I have been here for a long time—nearly 30 years—and I think we can smell electoral fraud when we feel it. I cannot see how the results can go from 90% in favour to 73% against.

Patients who relied on that service have nowhere to go now, except for being a charge on the health service. That decision caused immense pain. One patient, Mr T, aged 58 from Liverpool, said in an interview from October 2015:

“After 3 years of trying everything my doctor gave me homeopathy, and within 4 months my stomach problems were better. 18 months later I can lead a normal life again.”

A London patient with arthritis said:

“It is the only thing that has helped me find remission from a disease that previously left me wheelchair-bound.”

The core of this debate is the most recent, and most serious, attack on NHS homeopathy—the attack on the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, the largest public sector provider of integrated medicine in Europe, formerly known as the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. It offers an innovative patient-centred service, integrating the best of conventional and complementary treatments for a wide range of conditions. All clinics are led by consultants, doctors and other registered healthcare professionals, who received additional training in complementary medicine. This is a flagship hospital that is admired around the world. Instead of threatening it with closure, it should be hailed as an example of best practice and used to develop integrated medicine and to spread understanding of its benefits to the public and the health community.

For greater accuracy, I spoke to the director, Peter Fisher, and I have a briefing note from him. Apart from being a director of the hospital, he happens to be—as he described himself when he came before the Select Committee on Health in the last Parliament, during an inquiry into long-term care and conditions when I was acting Chair of the Committee—physician to Her Majesty the Queen. This is not somebody with a little training; he is a highly proficient, highly trained doctor—so much so that he is a doctor at that level.

Dr Fisher says:

“The Good Thinking Society is harassing the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine by threatening legal action against its host clinical commissioning group, Camden. The RLHIM has an agreement with the north London cluster of clinical commissioning groups, led by Camden, for clinical care pathways for 13 conditions. Patients who do not have these conditions can be treated if normal treatments have failed or have caused serious adverse effects, and in certain other circumstances. The GTS is attempting to close the latter pathway. This would cripple the hospital, preventing it from providing homeopathy, herbal and other treatments and from treating cancer patients. The GTS has harassed the RLHIM and other complementary medicine providers with legal action, reporting to the ASA”—

the Advertising Standards Authority—

“and the Charity Commission.”

I will say more on that if we have time. He continues:

“The RLHIM is the largest public sector centre for integrated medicine in Europe with a strong record of provision, innovation and research. A large scale study in France comparing conventional and homeopathic GPs showed that homeopathic GPs prescribe far fewer drugs, with the same or better clinical results, at 20% less cost.”

So there is an economic argument here, which I will say a word about in a moment.

In the year ending March 2016, the Good Thinking Society had an income of about £100,000. It gave £25,000 to something called the Nightingale Collaboration, which is not a charity, so that it could use the money more freely. That organisation has attacked osteopaths, who are regulated by an Act of Parliament—I was on the Bill Committee for that—and homeopaths, and has waged a campaign against complementary therapies with the Advertising Standards Authority.

The individual, Simon Singh, is a strange and inconsistent individual. He sent me an email before Christmas explaining why he could not send me a Christmas card. I am not sure I would have expected one, as I absolutely despise him. In 2015, it was reported that the charity made claims that processed sugars are not deadly and do not feed cancer, but he did not reveal that the charity was receiving funds from a very large soft drinks manufacturer. I think it is accepted that large amounts of sugar are not necessarily a good diet for cancer patients. I think that is why he got his nickname, “Sugar Drinks Simon”.

Mr Singh also criticised the lyrics of the Katie Melua song “Nine Million Bicycles” for inaccuracy, referring to the size of the observable universe. He proposed correcting the lyrics, saying that the value of 13.7 billion light years would be correct. I looked into that and found that the correct figure is 46.5 billion light years from home. Even on that subject, on which Mr Singh professes to have knowledge, he was wrong—so there is no surprise that he is wrong about homeopathy, about which he has absolutely no knowledge.

To recap, we have what my daughter would call the absolutely bonkers situation where an individual, Singh, who is a physicist, not a physician, with no understanding or experience of homeopathy, is trying to cripple our leading academic medical centre, part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, whose director—the man running it—is the Queen’s doctor. How mad can you get?

The core problem is not about whether or not homeopathy is effective. There have long been arguments about evidence-based medicine. Professor Sackett, who was responsible for the phrase, did not say it is about whether medicines work or not. He said it is about integrating individual clinical experience and the best external evidence; it is not just about external evidence. It is not just about the medicine—it is about the patient’s and the clinician’s experience. The nub of it is that complementary medicine can reduce the costs on the health service. I have quoted the French EPI3 study, which said that French GPs who integrate homeopathy in their practice use about a third of the antibiotics and psychotropic drugs and half the analgesics, with very similar results, at 20% less cost. That is not taking into account antimicrobial resistance or the adverse effects of analgesics, sleeping tablets or whatever.

There is a turf war here between two sides of the medical establishment, which is actually about resources. We have to resist that. The Secretary of State said, very sensibly, on LBC on 10 September 2014:

“There are some bits of the NHS where it”—

homeopathy—

“is sanctioned by GPs, but it wouldn’t be done without a doctor saying they thought that that was the right thing to do. And what doctors say is the right thing.”

He signed early-day motion 1240, which was about supporting homeopathic hospitals, in the 2006-07 Session of Parliament. It was signed by more than 200 Members—nearly a third of the Members of the House of Commons.

Today of all days—Brexit day—when the Prime Minister will be writing to the European Commission, I found this written answer in the Scottish Parliament from 23 February 2011. The then Health spokesman—no less an individual than the current First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon—replied. This is what she said in reply to a question about the effectiveness of homeopathy in relation to the Scottish Government’s integrative approach to patient care:

“In primary care, costs will relate to the cost of the remedy, which can be cheaper than the cost of orthodox drugs. Practitioners have also noted a reduction in side effects and dependency risks in some cases. In secondary care in Scotland, homoeopathy is only employed within a broader integrative care approach, with surveys showing both enhanced wellbeing and symptom reduction across a broad range of long term conditions, and a resultant reduction in NHS costs through reduced GP and hospital visits and repeat prescriptions.”

Well, there we are. That is what the First Minister in the devolved Administration thinks.

Homeopathy is a wonderful system of medicine. It has been part of the national health service for a long time, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the Government’s position.