Oral question asked in the House of Commons, by David Tredinnick (Conservative). It was answered on Tuesday, 24 July 2007 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Patient Choice

Question: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply and for writing to me about the regulation of Chinese medicine, which was helpful in setting a timetable. Does he accept that real problems are caused because the demand from patients is out of sync with the supply of services, especially in complementary and alternative medicine? Primary care trusts are not listening to patient demand. The situation is well illustrated in London, where the Royal London homeopathic hospital, which provides a range of services that go way beyond homeopathy, is being cut. If the Secretary of State really believes in patient choice, which is to be his flagship with his new broom Front Benchers—[Interruption.] Well, there are some new brooms, because all the old Ministers were sacked—[Interruption.] Well, most of them—a large proportion—were fired. Will the Secretary of State please consider issuing guidelines to primary care trusts to take patient choice into consideration?

Answer: In preparing to reply to this Adjournment debate, I looked carefully at the points the hon. Gentleman made in his letter to me but I am not persuaded of the need to issue guidelines at this time. It is clear to me that many more patients want the benefit of complementary and alternative medicine and therapies; indeed, the most recent survey showed a high percentage of patients looking for that. What general practitioners do is very much a matter for them; for instance, I understand that in the Newcastle primary care trust area 69 per cent. of GPs deal with complementary and alternative medicines, so I see no need to issue guidelines at this stage, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that such medicines are becoming an increasingly important part of GP prescriptions.

Secondary information

Type: Oral question
Reference: 463 c668-9
Session: 2006-07
Oral question type: 1st Supplementary
Chamber / Committee: House of Commons chamber
Subjects: Complementary medicine Greater London NHS Patient choice schemes Homeopathy
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Oral question on www.publications.parliament.uk