Medical Cannabis: Alleviation of Health Conditions

Debate between Alex Norris and Lisa Cameron

Thursday 4th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate and the hon. Members for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing it. I also thank the cross-party campaigners in this place beyond that group, including the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), for all that they have done over the years to put it on the parliamentary agenda.

Progress in making cannabis-based medical products available to those who need them has been slow, so it is right that we have the opportunity to debate the frustrating lack of progress. As hon. Members have said, this is the second debate in two days, which I hope gives those watching confidence that we in this place are taking the issue seriously.

I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Inverclyde in his opening speech about the families who are dealing with incredible, unthinkable challenges and who handle themselves with such dignity and make such powerful cases. I hope—I feel—that we have done them justice today and will continue to do so. In particular, I hope that the Minister will touch on his points about the limiting factors in research.

The speech of the hon. Member for Reigate was a characteristic tour de force. I always stop to listen when he is talking about the issue, because he speaks with such power. He made the point that it is unacceptably cruel to take effective medicines away from a child, which we all agree with. He linked that to palliative care, and I share the view that we want people at the end of their life to get whatever treatment might make their final days the best that they can be. Actually, that applies to adults throughout their lives: if people are living in pain and do not have to be, I would want to do anything I could to avert that.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the 2018 regulations and the sense that we thought they had solved it, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) also said. The hon. Member for Reigate gave us a hopeful way forward by concluding that we need to be creative and solution-focused. The Opposition share that view—I do not think there is a lot of politics on this issue—and support coming together to find a practical, effective, safe and risk-aware solution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington spoke in that spirit. He is fortunate to have been drawn in the private Member’s Bill ballot, which is precious for any right hon. or hon. Member. He is keen to work with the Government. I know him well and know the spirit in which he will work with them, so I hope the Minister will take that up. That private Member’s Bill would be a perfect vehicle to move the issue forward. His point that it is about not just epilepsy was well made. I double underlined the phrase that we need to give clinicians the “comfort to prescribe”, which was elegantly put. I completely support that goal and will come back to it.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West spoke about her constituency case of Murray. Many right hon. and hon. Members will recognise similar cases in their surgeries. The daftness of that story is that the UK’s prescribing could grind to a halt on the basis of a single person retiring. Where else in the health service would that ever be the case or tolerated? It is an absurd set of affairs.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) kindly facilitated the opportunity for me to meet her constituent, who is a doughty campaigner, as she says. To hear the impact on her constituent’s life, it is hard to understand why we are not doing everything we can to make sure that she can live with as little pain as possible. I will get on to the counterargument about the lack of evidence, but she is that evidence, because we know what her life was like before and after, so I find that argument hard to accept.

The common theme of the contributions has been frustration or, more positively, a desire to redouble our efforts in this area, which cuts both ways. There are opportunities in research, which I hope the Minister will talk about, with regards to epilepsy, long-term pain relief and mental health. We also need a stronger position on the regulation of products such as cannabidiol, which proliferate on the internet and can be found in various shops, in all sorts of forms, promising all sorts of things that are hard to establish. We need better regulation in that space.

When the Government accepted the therapeutic use of cannabis, it was met, as we have heard, with much relief from campaigners, such as the families of Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley, who has now gone 508 days without an epileptic fit thanks to his medicinal cannabis treatment. It has changed his life, but not everyone has been so lucky.

Bailey Williams has been denied access to medicinal cannabis for his epilepsy and his parents are forced to raise £1,200 a month for his treatment. The mother of 11-year-old Teagan Appleby spends about £2,000 a month to treat her daughter’s Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, as she has not received a prescription. In the time that she has been taking that treatment, she has to go to hospital only once—when it ran out. That is the impact on her life.

I think of my constituents and how few, if any, could spare £2,000 a month. Of course, all of them, and I daresay all of us, would go to whatever lengths necessary for our children—that is the tragic paradox—but it is not acceptable. We are letting people down on an issue that we thought we had resolved.

In 2018, cannabis-based products were rescheduled. Guidelines were produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and three products got through: Epidyolex for rare forms of epilepsy, Nabiximols for multiple sclerosis-related spasticity and Nabilone for side effects from chemotherapy. The regulations said that initial prescriptions must be made by a specialist medical practitioner and, in all cases, would be considered only when other treatments were unsuitable or had not worked.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point. Does he agree that the psychological pressure and stress of having to campaign constantly and raise money at that level is simply unfair? My constituent Lisa Quarrell has had to raise thousands of pounds for her child Cole Thomson and has been under that stress continually for years. It is time for us to work collectively to overcome any hurdles to achieving success.

Palestinian School Curriculum: Radicalisation

Debate between Alex Norris and Lisa Cameron

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for the intervention. On the IMPACT-se point, those were not my words, but the words of the then Minister. On UNRWA, I take the point that we need to see it in the round, but I do not see UNRWA as a particularly politicised operator, and it was on its numbers that I was relying.

From my time with UNRWA, it was clear that if its support stopped quickly, which it could if other Governments act as the United States did, there would not be significant support for people who desperately need it. The Government ought to be commended on their actions when that happened. I hope we can sustain that.

[Dr Cameron]

Surely that is exactly the point. UNRWA should act quickly to address all the concerns and issues that have been raised. All hon. Members want aid to reach people who are desperately in need, but at the same time, they do not want aid to be used counterproductively or in a way that promotes terrorist ideologies.