An increasing number of NHS trusts are no longer offering homoeopathic treatments to patients because of a lack of evidence that they work.

Figures reveal that only 37 per cent of 132 primary care trusts in England still have contracts for homoeopathic services. More than a quarter of trusts have stopped or reduced funding for the therapies over the past two years, while surviving homoeopathic clinics are in crisis, researchers say.

The Prince of Wales and the Queen are known to be supporters of homoeopathy, which is based on diluting in water or alcohol substances that could otherwise be poisonous. Most scientists argue that homoeopathic solutions are diluted so many times that they are unlikely to contain any active ingredients at all.

In 2006 a group of British scientists wrote to all NHS trusts recommending that they reject funding for “unproven or disproved treatments”. Those who support the treatments say that at the very least they have a placebo effect.

A new homoeopathy watchdog, the Natural Healthcare Council, is due to begin work in April, The Times reported this month. Membership will be voluntary but it will have the power to strike organisations off its register.

It has been set up by the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health after a request from the Department of Health. The NHS spends about £50 million a year on complementary therapies that will be covered by the new council. But according to Pulse, the GPs’ newspaper, the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital was fighting for survival after eight trusts cancelled contracts over the past year and a further six reduced referrals.

The newspaper found that referrals to the hospital, which costs £5 million a year, were down 20 per cent in a year. Peter Fisher, clinical director of the hospital, said that he was confident that his organisation would survive. However, the combination of funding cuts and scepticism among the scientific community was having an impact on homoeopathic services, he said.

Dr Fisher said his best results were for children with eczema. Overall, 70 per cent of people treated at the hospital reported improvements, with half of the total saying they experienced a “fairly large” improvement, he said.

Richard Hoey, deputy editor of Pulse, said: “If the NHS is now going to stop providing homoeopathy, that needs to be a decision taken in the full glare of public debate and not made in the committee rooms of cash-strapped trusts.”

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