Size of illegal cosmetic surgery trade unknown, health regulator admits

The official health regulator has admitted it does not know how big the criminal cosmetic surgery trade is.

Andy Morling, a director of criminal enforcement at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), told MPs they “don't have a baseline to understand how big this trade is”. He admitted this means officials are unable to know whether the illegal trade is “growing or reducing”.

Mr Morling said around 2,000 illegally traded botox doses had been seized over the last two years - which suggests the trade is “relatively small” compared to the 17.5 million doses of illegally traded medicine seized last year.

But he admitted to the Commons’ women and equalities committee: "We don't have a baseline to understand how big this trade is. Any crime is difficult to measure to any degree of certainty because it's a hidden thing. Crime is naturally not done in plain sight most of the time.”

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Talking about his suggestion that the trade is “relatively small”, he added: “Our intelligence, and we work on intelligence, gathering it from multiple different sources, to come to these conclusions.

“So whilst I haven't put a size on it, and I wouldn't be able to put a size on it, and I also wouldn't be able to put a size on whether it's growing or reducing, I'm afraid, because without a baseline, that would be meaningless, what I am saying is, for us based on our current intelligence picture, it is not as significant as some other areas of the illegal trade in medicines. That doesn't mean to say we're not giving it attention because we are.”

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It came as Sarah Owen, Labour MP and committee chairwoman, grilled health and safety directors at the Department for Health and Social Care, the NHS and the MHRA. She questioned how practitioners were not being sent to prison for causing horrific damage through botched cosmetic procedures - pointing out that if they did that sort of harm with a “baseball bat” there would be no question of it.

She told them: “There is a huge sector now worth billions of pounds to the UK economy that has non-surgical procedures, and we heard about the horrors of liquid Brazilian Butt Lifts. And how Sasha, who came to give evidence, ended up with sepsis and in a coma and given a 5% chance of living. And thankfully, she was able to come and give us evidence.

“Why is it that in the UK, you can buy filler, anybody, any of us, could buy filler and inject it into our faces, whereas in many other countries it would be illegal to do so.

“And why is it on the criminal enforcement side of it that that person that did that to Sasha, that money, that damage to her, is still able to practice on her high street in her local town, whereas if she had done that damage with to Sasha with a baseball bat, she'd actually be in prison. Why is it that any of us could buy filler and botox in this country?”

Dr Alison Cave, chief safety officer at the MHRA, said they were “actively looking” at a range of products, which don’t currently have a medical claim.

Mr Morling said: “Criminals need to be treated like criminals.” But he also said behaviour needed to be scrutinised, adding: “I firmly believe there are a number of practitioners out there who just don't know what they're doing is illegal, so their behaviour can be changed. So it's about changing the behaviour of the offender, but also changing the behaviour of the customer.”

In a victory for the Mirror ’s cosmetic surgery campaign, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said ministers will set out new cosmetic surgery regulations to deal with misconduct in the UK over the next week.

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