Cannabis Oil

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s kind words, and I will indeed take that patient feedback back to the department. I reassure her that this is an area where patients have undoubtedly led the way, and clinicians have to catch up. In doing so, there will need to be a meeting of minds and regulation in areas that are open to patient interpretation. In that period, there will undoubtedly need to be compromises on all sides.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the law changed over two years ago. The then Home Secretary said:

“We have now delivered on our promises … we will work with the NHS to help support specialists in making the right prescribing decisions.”


But they have not; it has been a hollow promise for terminal brain cancer sufferers such as my nephew. NHS doctors will not prescribe medical cannabis, and the BMA advises medics not to prescribe it, yet I understand that the UK is the largest producer of medical cannabis in the world. Just how many prescriptions have been issued for unlicensed cannabis medicines, other than those subject to randomised control trials, in the last 12 months?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is being a little unfair; Health Education England published a medicinal cannabis education package on 8 August 2019. But we cannot force clinicians to make prescriptions. That is not how the health service works. We need to work on clinical trials to put in place the correct authorisations and to give marketing authorisations for these important and promising drugs. That will require collaboration between government, the regulator and industry, and I call on industry to step up to that challenge.