Medicines for Human Use (National Rules for Homeopathic Products) Regulations 2006

My Lords, my question for my noble friend the Minister concerns referral to NICE of homeopathic remedies. I should declare my interests as an ex-professor of medicine and ex-president of the Royal College of Physicians. I can well understand the Government’s desire to try with these regulations to remove some of the confusion that can arise in the public’s mind, given that homeopathic water marketed before 1971 as a remedy could include an indication of what it was meant to treat, while water marketed after that date could be said only to be safe. Now we have the possibility that water that has been subjected to a ““homoepathic proving””, in the words of the regulations, can have indications attached. It is unclear to me whether homeopathic proof is simply proof that is so dilute that none of the original is left, or something else. One way to find out is to refer this whole question to NICE so that it can examine it properly. Can I persuade my noble friend to refer homeopathic remedies to NICE? Then there is the question of reporting of adverse events. That can be best illustrated by the case of homeopathic remedies for malaria, where I understand that patients seen at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases have had their definitive treatments delayed because they have been taking homeopathic remedies. That is a dangerous side effect of homeopathy, albeit indirect: it delays curative treatments. The problem here is that such reports go unreported, either through the adverse events system or through the drug side-effects route. Will my noble friend consider how such potentially dangerous effects of homeopathy can be reported in a systematic way?