Challenging misleading healthcare claims.

Red Tape Challenge

regulated

We need your help!

We are canvassing the views of our supporters so we can respond to the Government's Red Tape Challenge — they are looking at a lot of regulations, but the current focus is on medicines' legislation. The public are being asked:

…which regulations are working and which are not; what should be scrapped, what should be saved and what should be simplified.

We're particularly interested in the regulations surrounding homeopathic and herbal products.

For homeopathy, the regulation by the medicines' regulator the MHRA confers a degree of legitimacy onto products that have no robust evidence of efficacy. So, do you, our supporters, think the current regulation is a good idea? Are the labelling requirements misleading? Could these regulations be simplified or scrapped altogether?

Herbal products are different because they do contain potentially pharmacologically active ingredients. A case can be made for good regulation of them so that at least some measure of protection is afforded to the public. But since no evidence of efficacy is required for MHRA registration of traditional herbal products, does this regulation mislead more than it protects? If they are pharmacologically active, should they be regulated in the same stringent ways that pharmaceutical products are regulated? Or does the two-tier system provide acceptable protection to the public? Is the regulation onerous or is it essential protection to the public?

More information about each of these is given in our short survey.

Because responses to the Government's Red Tape Challenge have to be in by Thursday 12 April, we need our supporters to take our survey by Thursday 5 April — please take a few minutes now to complete it to give us time to analyse the results and finalise our submission.

We also urge you to submit your own response, sending it directly to the Red Tape Challenge — it's important to ensure your views are heard and taken into account by the Government.

If you are one of our supporters, please complete our Red Tape Challenge Survey.

Our Red Tape Challenge Survey has now closed.

Thanks to all our supporters who contributed.