An MP committee has concluded that homeopathy should not be NHS-funded.

MPs are urging the government to withdraw its funding for homeopathy, after research finds no evidence of its efficacy, apart from its offering of a placebo effect.

The Science and Technology Committee has also called for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to cease licensing homeopathic products because they are not medicines, stating that “the licensing regimes and deficient labelling lend a spurious medical legitimacy to homeopathic products.”

It agreed with previous government findings that homeopathy only offered a placebo effect, rather than any other efficacy, and concluded that no further government funding should be given to any other clinical trials of homeopathy.

MP Phil Willis, Chairman of the Committee, said: “This was a challenging inquiry which provoked strong reactions. We were seeking to determine whether the Government’s policies on homeopathy are based on current evidence. They are not.

“It sets an unfortunate precedent for the Department of Health to consider that the existence of a community which believes that homeopathy works is ‘evidence’ enough to continue spending public money on it. This also sends out a confused message, and has potentially harmful consequences. We await the Government’s response to our report with interest.”

The British Homeopathic Association (BHA) has condemned the report as “narrow and cursory”. Cristal Sumner, BHA Chief Executive, said: “It does seem an irresponsible way of decision-making for a Committee of four voting members to draw conclusions that impact the health and welfare of thousands of patients from just four and half hours of verbal testimony on three distinct topics and from a number of written submissions that were each limited to just 3000 words.”

In a similar vein, Dr Michael Dixon, of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, found the report “disappointing”. He said: “We should not abandon patients we cannot help with conventional scientific medicine. If homeopathy is getting results for those patients, then of course we should continue to use it.

“Science is a vital tool in healthcare, but so are compassion and caring and treating patients with dignity. It is not clear that the Committee took that into account.”

Today, the NHS spends approximately £152,000 or 0.001% of the drugs budget on homeopathic drugs – and according to a 2009 Guardian report, around £4 million on homeopathy between 2005 and 2008.

Homeopathy was introduced to Britain in the 1830s. It treats patients with highly-diluted substances, either through ‘like-cures-like’ treatment, when the substance causing the illness is diluted then administered, or through ‘ultra-dilution’, when the more dilute a substance is, the more effective it becomes.