Cannabis

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on raising this issue and on the way in which she has done it. The Question asks whether the Government “plan to invite” a review of the evidence. It is asking not whether the Government will reschedule cannabis but whether they plan to review the evidence, or at least to have the evidence reviewed. That is the crucial point.

It is six and a half years since I tabled a QSD in which I asked what consideration the Government had given,

“to establishing a royal commission on the law governing drug use and possession”.

I argued the case for evidence-based policy. My starting point was that there was a demonstrable problem and that we needed to address it. I was not advocating that the policy should be adopted but making the case for reviewing existing policy. In reply, the Minister said that there was considerable disagreement on the issue—well, not in that debate; every Peer who spoke, bar the Minister, agreed with me.

In this debate the focus is on the rescheduling of cannabis. As we have heard, there is a particularly powerful case for reviewing the use of cannabis under certain conditions for medicinal use. The MS Society has changed its position on the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes in the light of reviewing the evidence, and its stance is a measured one.

The arguments that have been deployed against change by the Home Office do not stack up, especially under a Conservative Government. If a law is not working and change is resisted on the grounds of sending the wrong signals, then Ministers have little grasp of the Conservative view of law.

I repeat what I said in 2011:

“My case is that we need to explore whether the present law is necessary and sufficient, whether it is necessary but not sufficient, or whether it is neither necessary nor sufficient”.—[Official Report, 9/3/11; col. 1675.]


Implicitly the Government took, and take, the first of those positions. There was and is no critical reflection. Yesterday my noble friend Lady Williams reiterated that she supported evidence-based policy. Now is the time to consider the evidence. Will my noble friend commit to that?