One month ago an undercover investigation by The Times [Read original article here] revealed how beauty industry practitioners with no medical qualifications were injecting women with “black market” variants of Botox, the anti-wrinkle treatment. Yesterday Sajid Javid, the health secretary, tabled an amendment to the Health and Care Bill going through parliament that would allow him to introduce a licensing regime for Botox and fillers.
This is the right way forward and Mr Javid deserves credit for acting so quickly after our investigation. Botox and other licensed brands of the botulinum toxin are rightly available in Britain only on prescription. What’s more, although beauticians can administer the injections, they have to be trained. These are sensible safeguards. Campaigners say there were 270 complaints of botched treatments in 2020, up from 210 the year before, with side effects including large sores and even permanent disfigurement.
Yet this newspaper found beauticians on social media offering treatments using cheaper versions of Botox that have not been licensed for sale in Britain and have not gone through safety checks in this country. At one beauty clinic inYorkshire, a man who presented himself as a doctor but is not registered with the General Medical Council tried to convince our reporter to have 25 injections of an unlicensed product in her face.
The proposed licensing scheme would introduce consistent standards for cosmetic procedures and safety standards for the premises where they are performed. There is a case for going further and requiring all doctors who carry out such procedures to be given training. Meanwhile the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is conducting its own investigation of our findings. There should be no place for “black market” treatments in Britain’s beauty salons.
