Winchester MP Steve Brine has come under fire for backing Early Day Motions (EDMs) in the House of Commons that support homeopathy.

Mr Brine signed four EDMs on homeopathy which has been slated by the medical establishment.

Dr Clio Bellenis, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “I was disappointed my MP had signed these EDMs.

“It is a waste of parliamentary time to be discussing something that one is hoping is becoming a dead duck.”

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 which in healthy people would produce its symptoms.