Since taking office in July 2024, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been scratching around here and there for extra cash for the public coffers.
Plans to scrap the winter fuel allowance for pensioners became a complete circus in a bid to save £1.5 billion before being reversed. Changes to inheritance tax rates for family farms have bedevilled the government since they were proposed, and have ended up watered down anyway.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Picture: Jordan Pettitt/PAKing Charles is a patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy. Picture: Mark Westley
All of these things may make people feel slightly better on a day-to-day basis, perhaps, but they do not come anywhere close to the standards of proof needed to qualify as real medicine or treatment.
A small additional tax on the industry does not seem an oppressive measure, and might go some way towards discouraging its growth.
In an ideal world, these would be matters for civil society, but all the while we have governments which need to raise money, they have to make choices about where to get it and the woo-woo market seems a suitable candidate.
Kate Shemirani, whose son Gabriel has blamed her encouragement to avoid medical treatment for Paloma Shemirani’s death of cancer at 23. Picture: Neil Atkinson/Alamy/PADan Esson, Local Democracy Reporter