Cannabis Oil

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I would turn around my noble friend’s proposition and ask this question. If many vaccine manufacturers can turn around clinical trials in eight months for an extremely complicated vaccine, how come the cannabis-producing companies cannot turn around clinical trials over years?

[Lord Field of Birkenhead (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I declare that I am a cannabis user to counter pain, and no doubt later today we will be able to come back to that issue. I hope that his officials are watching to witness the support there is in this place for the role that he is trying to secure so that young sufferers who shake their brains to pieces might get relief today rather than tomorrow, when it is too late.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for sharing that personal testimony, which is extremely touching and relevant. I share with him that there is a large amount of ministerial support for the principle of this exciting and interesting area. If there is any frustration on my behalf, it is only that somehow the industry has not matured to the point that it can sponsor the kinds of clinical trials that can take these important medicines through the necessary authorisation process that can put them on the NICE list so that they are available for more patients.

Covid-19: Test Results

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I acknowledge the presence of fraud and condemn all those involved, but I do not see the connection between fraud and inefficiency.

[Lord Field of Birkenhead (CB)]

My Lords, I ask the Minister to convey our thanks to those rank and file workers who are trying to make this system work. I also say that, until he modifies the scheme so that we have local tracing, there will be many more sessions of Question Time that will be embarrassing for him.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord—I am never embarrassed—for giving me the opportunity to say a massive thanks to those tens of thousands involved. They take a huge amount of heat from the criticism targeted at test and trace, but many of them are working through the night to hit our targets, because people often take their tests during the morning or the afternoon. A lot of them work at the weekend and during holidays, when people often want their test results. It is arduous, tough, technical work and we are enormously grateful to those concerned. On local testing, we have in place 100 local test partnerships between local authorities and the national test and trace system which are proving extremely valuable, particularly in targeting hard-to-reach communities. We are putting an enormous amount of resources into them and they are proving extremely successful.