Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Thornton

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

[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.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Field—he may not technically be my noble friend, but he is really—for bringing this issue to the Committee at this stage. He probably knows that he is not the only parliamentarian who has been driven to cannabis products for similar reasons, but my lips are sealed about who the others might be.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is absolutely correct. She and I have form. I have been supporting her from the Front Bench on this issue for quite a long time. While the debate was going on, I looked to see what Hansard had to say about this. The last time, I think, that we discussed this was in March 2019. At that time, the framework and law had been changed the previous November, so that is two years ago. At that point four people had managed to get cannabis products prescribed. When the noble Baroness put the question to the House, it was answered by the Minister’s predecessor. Will the Minister say how many more people there are now? I think it is probably not that many more, and I see this amendment as a scream of frustration about this issue. There is justifiable frustration that we have not managed to regulate this product in a way that makes it accessible to people who need it most. It also exacerbates the inequalities in our health system because, as the noble Lord, Lord Field, said, he can afford to buy it, but there are thousands of people who need it and cannot afford to buy it. I support this amendment, but I am really much more interested to see what on earth the Government are going to do to make progress with this.

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

I am now able to call the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Thornton

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 have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I gave the Minister notice last week that I might well want to speak after her, and I am doing that, for two reasons. One is to remind the Committee that, although we will allow the government amendments to go through without any objection, we do not agree with them, and will probably seek to amend them at a later stage.

The second point is to do with the word “person”. I thank the Minister for going into some detail, but frankly, that alarmed me more than reassured me, so I think we may have to engage with this, and discuss how to remove that word. It would be much too dangerous and risky to have such an amorphous expression in the Bill. Perhaps the Bill team could find some expression that, although it does not list all the different things that the person is supposed to be, provides some protection to cover the range of bodies that need to be consulted. I accept that we do not want long definitions in the Bill, but I am concerned about our having such an open definition, and we may discuss this again at a later stage.