Winchester and Chandler's Ford MP Steve Brine has come under fire for supporting early day motions in the House of Commons that support homeopathy.

Mr Brine signed four EDMs on homeopathy which has been slated by the medical establishment as ‘quack medicine.’ Dr Clio Bellenis, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust, was critical of Mr Brine: “I was disappointed my MP had signed these EDMs. It looks like he is giving homeopathy his support.

“It is a terrible waste of parliamentary time to be discussing something that one is hoping is becoming a dead duck. There are many outdated practices that people used to believe, like cupping and bleeding, that are found to be non-effective. I hope Mr Brine was just being naïve.”

The British Medical Association recently castigated homeopathy as “witchcraft”. It has called for homeopathic remedies to be banned on the NHS and removed from pharmacies where they are for sale as medicines.

Homeopathy is the treatment of disease by tiny doses of drugs that in healthy people would produce its symptoms.

Dave Hughes, president of Hampshire Skeptics Society, said: “It is not a fantastic start as an MP for Mr Brine. Taxpayers deserve to have laws based on evidence not on witchcraft and magic.”

Mr Brine, in a statement, defended his support for the EDMs: “Sadly I have more than enough experience of serious illness to know offering people false hope is a cruel hoax but that's not what is happening here.

“In reality EDMs mean absolutely nothing in Parliamentary terms but these have promoted an energetic debate which has been fascinating and informative. The new NHS will have a commissioning board at its heart whose job will be to inform GP-led commissioning through scientific evidence, clinical evidence and guidelines on all forms of treatment.

“It will be for GPs themselves, managing their budgets, to enable patients to exercise greater choice. That choice should not be dictated by politicians or vested interest but should be determined by patients and their clinical advisers."

The Hampshire Skeptics Society meets on the last Thursday of every month at 7.30pm at the Roebuck Inn in Stockbridge Road, Fulflood. The next meeting is on August 26.