Society of Homeopaths – Appetite for destruction, not regulation

In July the Society of Homeopaths (SoH) declared that they would be seeking statutory regulation via the Health Professions Council (HPC).  At the time I suggested that such a move would be problematic given homeopathy’s inability to train properly, analyse research and appreciate the value of ethics.  I also reported that the SoH had rejected Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) regulation, a non-statutory form, in strong terms:

The Board has carefully considered many other options, including joining the Complementary and Natural Healthcare council (CNHC). However, we are concerned that CNHC is not currently in a position to protect the standards already achieved within the profession. Statutory Regulation will not be a fast fix option but the Board believes it best protects standards already in place.

Sadly for the homeopaths it looks like the SoH’s drive for statutory regulation will not only be unsuccessful but it will actively prevent attempts by other homeopathic bodies to co-ordinate the professions attempts at asserting responsible behaviour.

According to a recently released FOI response the SoH have not made a formal application to the HPC and the HPC feel that they should be regulated by the CNHC instead:

I can confirm that the Society of Homeopaths has, to date, not made a formal application to us under our new professions process. We met with the Society of Homeopaths in June 2009 to talk about our new professions process and about regulation more generally.

Our legislation has provisions which allow us to make recommendations to Government about the regulation of new professions. We have established a set of ‘new professions criteria’. Normally an application for registration is made by a professional body or bodies representing an aspirant profession. They submit a formal application showing us how they believe they meet the criteria. This is then assessed and discussed at public meetings of our Council and a decision made. If the criteria is met, we can make a recommendation to the Secretary of State and Ministers in the devolved administrations about the regulation of that group. However, any decision about regulation is one for government and, ultimately, for parliament.

At present, the stated policy of the Department of Health in England is that a range of complementary therapies, such as homeopathy, should not be subject to ‘full blown statutory regulation’. Instead the Department has funded the CNHC to set up a federal,system of voluntary registration

In addition to this, at the recent Science & Technology committee ‘homeopathy evidence check’ Mike O’Brien the Minister of State (Health) confirmed that the SoH have a problem talking to the CNHC but ruled out any government sanctioned move to the statutory regulation of homeopaths.

Mr O’Brien: We do not propose at this stage to have statutory regulation. We did fund some work by the Princes Foundation for Integrated Health through £110,000 pounds over three years to set up some voluntary self-regulation. Basically the Complementary and National Healthcare Council was set up in 2008; it is still having some discussions, shall we say, with the Society of Homeopaths – or maybe sometimes not having discussions, because I still think there is some disagreement there – and the question is whether voluntary self-regulation in an area like this is the better approach. There is to some extent some statutory recognition, of course, of homeopathy, which is very limited, but the question as far as we are concerned is should we undertake a larger scale statutory regulation, and at this point we are not convinced that is the right approach.

Together this suggests that homeopaths joining the statutory HPC is not an option for the forseeable future.  I have no particular comment on whether or not this is a good thing.  It is impossible to judge how homeopathy could be statutory regulated without seeing a proposed mechanism that deals with the stated HPC criteria for aspiring entrants:

Aspirant groups must:

Cover a discrete area of activity displaying some homogeneity

Apply a defined body of knowledge

Practise based on evidence of efficacy

Have at least one established professional body which accounts for a significant proportion of that occupational group

Operate a voluntary register

Have defined routes of entry to the profession

Have independently assessed entry qualifications

Have standards in relation to conduct, performance and ethics

Have Fitness to Practise procedures to enforce those standards

Be committed to continuous professional development (CPD)

I do however suspect fulfilling these criteria might be difficult.

Additionally the SoH appear to be in denial about this, in their submission to the Science & Technology committee they stated that:

2.3 The Society is applying to the Health Professions Council (HPC) for the statutory regulation of homeopaths, following a survey in 2006 which showed that 65 per cent of our membership supported statutory regulation. [...] The move to statutory regulation is seen as a natural step forward for both The Society and the profession, most importantly to offer protection to the public as, under existing laws, someone without training can currently practise as a homeopath.

This strikes me as slightly deluded, at the point this was submitted the SoH would have been well aware that the HPC were not offering encouragement for an application for statutory regulation but, consistent with government policy, were stating that CNHC regulation was a viable route for regulation.  To suggest to a parliamentary committee that HPC supervised statutory regulation was a viable option is a far stronger conclusion than the evidence would suggest possible.  Additionally, although 65% of SoH members might be a plurality but it is not a majority of homeopaths, the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH), the second largest professional organisation in the UK, officially reject the SoH’s attempts at regulation.  The SoH cannot claim to speak for the bulk of the profession on this matter.

Talk of regulation, either via the HPC or CNHC is irrelevant though.  According to the CNHC, when asked about homeopaths being included in the list of professions they are prepared to regulate

Homeopathy is the only profession in the group listed which has not yet indicated an ‘in principle’ willingness to recommend CNHC registration to their practitioners. We would hope this situation will change over time. Individual homeopaths are already seeking registration with CNHC but until a PSB is in place for that profession, regrettably they cannot be registered.

This also represents a serious problem for the CNHC, the quackometer has argued that:

The Ofquack project was really dependent on the homeopaths to succeed. Homeopaths represent the largest group of alternative medicine cranks in the UK and if the various homeopathic factions had played ball, the CNHC could have been secure with subscriptions from many thousands of homeopaths.

So there you have it, the SoH will only settle for a form of regulation they have been told they will not get in the forseeable future, the ARH reject any form of regulation at all, other than their own, and the CNHC depend on homeopaths being regulated for their survival.  Unfortunately for them there is no appetite for the regulation of homeopathy in the UK, only it seems, an appetite for destruction.