MERIDEN MP Saqib Bhatti has backed a Private Members Bill in Parliament to ban the use of botox and cosmetic fillers on under-18-year-olds for aesthetic purposes.
The new Bill proposes that only cosmetic procedures undertaken on medical grounds under the direction of a doctor registered with the General Medical Council, will be permitted.
During the debate, Saqib Bhatti said: “I was shocked that children under the age of 18 are able to get these treatments, in what can sometimes be described as the “Wild West” of non-medical cosmetics”.
In understanding the social strains faced by children today, Saqib said “think of the pressures that they have in everyday society, which, by the way, did not start with social media. I remember, when I was growing up, stories of teens reading magazines and eating disorders coming up. This has been a long-standing issue, although social media has accentuated it”.
In the closing statements of his speech, Saqib Bhatti said: “I can only see this Bill as a piece of common sense, it does not ban cosmetic fillers on medical grounds, but purely on aesthetic grounds, if you are under the age of 18. For this reason, I wholeheartedly support this Bill”.
New research from campaign group Save Face shows in the last 12 months a 73 per cent surge in complaints over botched jobs, the BBC reported. Of those under 18s who suffered at the hands of unregulated cowboy practitioners, 42 had lip fillers, two had cheek fillers and one had a non-surgical nose job.
The group has been campaigning for a change in the law since 2014 and in that time supported dozens of young people whose lives have been seriously impacted because of a cosmetic procedure gone wrong. Earlier this year, they launched the ‘Had Our Fill’ campaign in collaboration with The Sun newspaper calling for legislation to protect young people from being exploited. MP for Sevenoaks, Laura Trott saw the campaign and decided to take the matter forward.
Speaking in Parliament, she said: “We must stop the dangerous and unnecessary non-medical procedures that can ruin children’s lives.”
“The absence of a legal age limit for Botox and dermal fillers means any 15-year-old could walk into a shop and get their lips injected by someone with no qualifications whatsoever.”
She said one survey suggests 100,000 under-16s have had cosmetic treatments.
