Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Walmsley

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

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I heartily support the noble Lord, Lord Field, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I thank the noble Lord for his important evidence, and congratulate the noble Baroness on her many years of energetic campaigning on this matter. Noble Lords may know that I too have campaigned long and hard for medicinal cannabis projects, that have been proved to be safe and effective, to be prescribed on the NHS for UK patients. When the Home Office changed the status of medicinal cannabis two years ago, many of us thought that, given the mass of evidence that there are many such safe and effective products in widespread use abroad, such medicines would become available free to UK patients. That has turned out not to be so. Although some expert clinicians are prescribing them for appropriate patients—including the noble Lord, Lord Field—in a private capacity at high cost, very few patients have received their medicine free on the NHS. Why is this? It seems that it is because NICE has not approved them because there have not been any random controlled double-blind trials. Therefore, several health trusts are forbidding consultants who want to prescribe these medicines to do so, on pain of losing their jobs.

There are children with intractable epilepsy in this country whose lives have been saved by the medicines, for which their parents have had to fundraise. The lives of some of those children have been put at risk because the coronavirus has prevented that fundraising, and they suffered serious preventable fits. Many of these children have been treated with approved pharmaceutical medicines that have never been approved for use with children and have serious side effects. That is why we need a proper regulatory framework based on the full cadre of available evidence, which this amendment proposes. It will not be difficult to establish the safety of these medicines, as required by subsection 3(a). If those making the regulations are allowed to take into account the health records of people who have already been taking these medicines, and also the vast amount of evidence from other developed countries which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has listed, that will subsection 3(c). Subsection 3(b) requires that availability be considered when making the regulations. These medicines are readily available. Indeed, a lot of them are being made in this country and exported because they cannot be sold here. How mad is that? Nor are they expensive as medicines go, and the NHS can bulk buy at a discount anyway.

In order to satisfy those who do not trust evidence from other countries—although why is beyond me—we also need to collect data from UK patients who are managing to get cannabis medicines in order to provide the information required by NICE, but there is no system in place to do that. Will the Minister say why the NHS Commissioning through Evaluation system is not being used? It is a well-established and approved system that collects patient data and clinician observation on the use of novel medicines and treatments. It strikes me that, given that cannabis medicine’s illegal status made it impossible to collect much UK data before 2018, it would be an ideal candidate for this trusted method of evaluation. Finally, I would welcome the Minister’s response to this suggestion.

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

I call the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. Lord Norton? We will move to call the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and come back to the noble Lord, Lord Norton if we have time. I call the noble Lord, Lord Patel.