Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Jolly

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will need to speak only very briefly because the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Walmsley, have covered the ground extensively, fully and informatively. It is a privilege to be involved in an amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Field of Birkenhead. We have been friends, discussing such issues for very many years, although he was in a different House, so it is a pleasure to see him and support his amendment.

My noble friend Lord Field spoke from personal experience, and my noble friend Lady Meacher spoke extensively about the information available. In 1998, the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords recommended that there should be a programme to assess the medicinal use of cannabis and that ways should be found to use it. NICE has recommended one or two areas where it can be used, as has already been said. Very few NHS prescriptions have been given out, but more than 1 million people use cannabis preparations bought privately at huge cost. They use them because they find benefit from them. The report suggests that the people who benefit from it mostly suffer from chronic pain. Despite that, reports have been published where people with Alzheimer’s, cancer, chronic pain, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis, to name but a few, found benefits from it. More than 20,000 publications on PubMed, not of clinical trials, but of people’s experience and data collected from patients, show that they have found it to be beneficial.

When recommending and assessing medicinal products using cannabis, NICE suggested that research should be carried out in six or seven areas. I do not know what research has been carried out. The problem with such a recommendation is that it does not recommend who should do the research. So I ask the question: who should be doing this research to explore the benefits that patients find in medicinal cannabis?

Private clinics prescribe more and more cannabis on a daily basis, and more and more clinics are opening in cities in England where cannabis is available. My noble friend Lady Meacher and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, alluded to two important issues. One is that a way needs to be found to collect information on patients’ experiences and data to show why so many patients go to private clinics to get cannabis products and what benefits they derive from them.

I look forward to the Minister’s response, but I hope she may agree, as it would not require legislation or an amendment to the Bill, that the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care through the NIHR should establish a forum of specialists, including patients, to find a way forward to collect information on a more formal basis. I hope the Minister will respond positively to that. It has been a pleasure to take part in this debate.

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the amendment signed by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and others would require the Secretary of State to make regulations concerning medicinal cannabis and associated devices. The noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, made his case clearly and strongly. I have a family member who used cannabis as a painkiller towards the end of their life when pharmaceuticals failed. Given the huge relief it can bring to patients with conditions such as epilepsy, it is vital that barriers to access are removed. We have heard that since the law was changed in November 2018, only a very small number of prescriptions have been written for medical cannabis.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, have for many years supported the use of medical cannabis for a small number of conditions. Very few patients have received their medicine on the NHS because NICE has yet to approve the use of cannabis in any context. Evidence is available, so why are the Government fighting shy of using cannabis or its derivatives, thus forcing individuals to become criminals by having to go abroad to countries where cannabis is legally available, but at a huge cost, and then smuggle it home? It does not make sense. We support the amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

We do not seem to be able to contact the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Jolly

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. Lady Finlay? I think we had better move on and we can come back. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly.

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this amendment would require the Secretary of State to establish the innovative medicines fund, as promised in the Conservative’s 2019 manifesto. It provides that it is funded from rebates paid to the Government under the terms of the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme.

The Cancer Drugs Fund was a Cameron initiative from the general election of 2010, and the 2019 general election saw a Johnson extension: the innovative medicines fund. He promised that

“doctors can use the most advanced, life-saving treatments for conditions such as cancer or autoimmune disease, or for children with other rare diseases.”

The promise was to increase the funding to £0.5 billion. Can the Minister confirm the figure and clarify how “innovative” will be defined? Importantly, how will the fund address the UK issue of combination pricing, where some new cancer treatments are not cost effective, even when the price is nothing?

There are questions about what drugs outside of cancer drugs could qualify to go into the new fund. Can the Minister help with a response here? There might be candidates from medicines selected for the early access to medicines fund, a pre-licensing indicator of promising innovation given by the MHRA. This would allow them to be funded while further evidence is generated. Given the focus on innovation and the very reason for EAMS to designate a drug as a promising innovative medicine, which is a prerequisite for any drug to get a full, positive EAMS designation, there looks to be a good fit, and we support it.