Only certified cosmetic surgeons and people with proper qualifications should be allowed to carry out some aesthetic cosmetic treatments such as using fillers to erase wrinkles, health minister Edith Schippers said on Monday.

A crack-down on cowboys was first announced last December following a flurry of complaints. In a briefing to parliament, the minister says it is too easy to have procedures aimed purely at improving a person’s looks.

The aim of the new legislation is to ‘ensure people are better informed about the risks, to protect them against unnecessary risks and improve the quality of practitioners’, the briefing said. The minister also wants the under-18s to be banned from having all but essential cosmetic surgery.

A ‘health warning’ ahead of television programmes featuring aesthetic procedures is also an option.

‘People are too quick to think it must be okay if they see a white coat, but they need to be more alert,’ the minister’s briefing said.

Specialists have welcomed the minister’s efforts to better regulate the industry, Nos television said.