My hon. Friend can be assured that my Department has the closest possible rapport with the Department of Employment. I am in some difficulty about the time.

I was referring to the question of ethics and the standard of practice. Under the National Health Service Acts, the paramedical professions must practise therapies which are based on a systematic body of knowledge, which may or may not be wholly scientific in character, which is compatible with the body of knowledge for the time being attributed to and acknowledged to be the basis of contemporary medical practice". That is not a quotation from the National Health Service Acts. It is a quotation from guidelines published by the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine in its annual report for 1976–77. The council intends to follow these guidelines in considering applications to extend the provision of the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act 1960 to new professions. There is nothing to prevent acupuncturists from applying to the council for an extension of the Act's priorities to cover acupuncture. Indeed, I am told that the procedures necessary for making such an application have been explained in writing and at meetings with my Department to the British Acupuncture Association.

The Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine is a statutory body. It is not controlled in any way by my right hon. Friend, and appeal from its decision is to the Privy Council. I cannot say how acupuncturists would fare if they applied to have the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act extended to cover their profession. I do not and nor does my Department make value judgments about the comparative efficacies of different methods of treatment. We quite properly leave such judgments to be made by the medical profession as a whole. This is demonstrated in the way that its profession exercises individual clinical judgments. The Royal Colleges and their speciality organisations speak on behalf of the profession. We look to the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine on the basis of applications made to the council to determine to what professions to extend the application of the Act. It is for the council to create the machinery for the State registration of the members of professions whose members accept that their work is supplementary to medicine.

The law does not exclude the offering of new therapies which the medical profession has not yet generally adopted or recognised. Nor does the law exclude the introduction to this country of forms of treatment which are exotic but very old, as is the case of acupuncture. The law permits practitioners of such therapies to offer them under the common law. Meanwhile, our traditions permit the spread of new ideas or the removal of old ones. Their acceptance or rejection depends ultimately, of course, on the people at large and by Parliament as their representatives.

I am sorry that I have not been able to give as comprehensive a reply as I should have liked, but I am mindful of the importance of the claims of hon. Members who have later debates. My Department will remain in contact with my hon. Friend about the other points that he raised in his speech.