Medicinal Cannabis: Economic Contribution

David Mundell Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the economic contribution of medicinal cannabis.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating this debate. This slot on a Thursday afternoon is a challenge for many Members to attend because they have constituency commitments on a Thursday afternoon, but I am confident that we will have a good-quality debate and, importantly, that the issues I want to raise will be put on the record.

I am conscious that a number of these issues relate to the Department for Business and Trade and that my hon. Friend the Minister will obviously respond in his capacity as a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care. I hope that if any issues are not within my hon. Friend’s remit and he does not feel able to respond, he will undertake to take them forward with ministerial colleagues.

Many Members will have been introduced to the issue of medical cannabis by constituents getting in contact to tell them, as their MP, about the real difference that this form of cannabis has made or could make to their own or their families’ lives. Such testimonies, along with scientific study after scientific study, led to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), when he was Home Secretary, legalising medical cannabis in 2018, and thereby ending the potential criminalisation of those living with or just trying to manage multiple sclerosis, cancer or epilepsy. That was a significant step forward for patients.

Some 17,000 UK patients are estimated to have been prescribed Sativex, nabilone and Epidyolex in the UK last year. I am sure that many Members of Parliament could tell a story from their constituents about what a difference such prescriptions have made to the quality of users’ lives by easing agonising muscle stiffness, by reducing chemotherapy-induced sickness, or as a therapy for seizures, especially for children.

The 2018 legal changes were also a significant step for the medical cannabis industry in the UK. We should be clear that medical cannabis is just that. This is a legitimate industry, and an industry of the future. Its products do not come from humid, tinfoil-draped sheds or sunlamp-lit lofts; they come from laboratories and facilities that are as controlled an environment as those that synthesise a vaccine, for example. I know that to be the case, having seen at first hand such facilities being developed in my own constituency. The medical cannabis industry is one of legal and professional standards, rigorous regulators, approvals, licensing, inspections and almost endless specialist equipment—be it quantum sensors, microscopes or leaf barometers—not to mention stringent safety and security protocols.

Of note is not just the standards to which the cannabis is produced but the volumes produced. In the UK in 2021, some 59 hectares were harvested, producing 329 tonnes of cannabis for medical and scientific purposes. Of that, 213 tonnes were exported—more than half the reported world total. Beneath those impressive headline figures, though, is the impact that the industry can have on local economies and local communities. That is why I have been and remain very supportive of the development of a facility in my constituency by Hilltop Leaf.

Too often, investment in new industries is funnelled into enormous singular developments captured by large corporate interests, or it goes straight into cities. Rural and agricultural communities such as those I represent often get overlooked, with seemingly only wind farms and tourism receiving investment. The medical cannabis industry is an antidote to that.

In many ways, I feel the growing of medical herbs is a form of farm diversification—an evolution of horticulture that builds on local strengths and skills. I hope that the investment by Hilltop Leaf, with one of the largest greenhouses in the UK, will demonstrate that medical cannabis can have a transformational impact on local communities. It will bring a variety of good horticultural, administrative, managerial and logistical jobs that I hope will anchor young people, who often feel the gravitational pull of large cities for the want of opportunities in a rural area such as the one I represent, which has seen the demise of traditional industries such as textiles. It could also meet nearly 10% of the UK’s 2019 domestic need.

For all the successes of the UK cannabis sector to date, it could be so much more. Bureaucratic, legal, administrative, regulatory, medical, licensing and planning issues all inhibit the industry’s potential and hinder vital investment in rural Britain. Indeed, the over-onerous process for being licensed in the first instance has given me cause to worry about the development in my constituency stalling. I am afraid the UK’s approach to the industry is incoherent and insufficiently consistent.

Yes, medical cannabis can be prescribed, but only by specialists, and that is predominantly being done outside the NHS, particularly in Scotland. Although I said earlier that in 2021 some 17,000 people received legal prescriptions for medical cannabis, it is conservatively estimated that next year there will be approximately 337,000 potential patients. That could be many times larger should new conditions be covered. This state of legality but inaccessibility is grossly unfair, and is contrary to the principles of our health service that those who can pay can get private prescriptions—or source their requirements from drug dealers—while those who cannot pay go without. All the while, there are almost 24 million prescriptions for opioids in the UK. Those figures, in differential terms, are staggering.

The potential savings for the NHS in the prescribing of medical cannabis have been detailed, with one US study showing a potential provider saving of 29% because of reductions in opioid dosage. As I said, by confirming the efficiency of medical cannabis in helping with certain conditions while stopping it being readily available, we are pointing those who are desperate to illegal markets. Do we really think that patient safety is best served by criminal suppliers, who provide a product of poor quality that is likely to contain contaminants because of the fashion in which it was grown? I certainly do not. Do we need to see the benefits for British growers, supply chains, jobs and tax revenues bypassed and go instead to criminals and smugglers, both here and overseas? Clearly not, especially when the medical cannabis sector has a potential value to the UK economy of more than £1 billion.

Our incoherence also extends to cannabidiol, or CBD. We allow its purchase—indeed, the UK’s CBD market is the second largest globally and was worth £300 million in 2019—but our hemp licensing measures mean that the flowers and leaves, where CBD is found, must be destroyed. As such, the CBD market fulfils its needs through overseas imports, and British supply chains do not benefit. Growers are necessarily forsaking the opportunity to yield a crop of £10,000 per acre, compared with £400 for wheat, because of this approach. Such yields would be a real boon for rural Britain.

If the UK’s regulatory, legal and medical frameworks were in line with those elsewhere, it is estimated that up to 100,000 jobs of the future could be created, and they would be good-quality jobs, as I have already set out. It is an opportunity that should be within our grasp, but unfortunately we currently do not seem able to take it forward. On 14 November last year, I was disappointed when a fellow Member asked the Business Department about its willingness to take forward the approach to the medical cannabis industry as part of its medical sciences strategy and commitment for the UK to be a world leader in such fields; unfortunately, the then Minister gave what I regarded as a lukewarm and non-committal answer.

As I am sure the Minister and all present will agree, nascent industries need nurturing, and the medical cannabis sector is no different. Much like the plants that the sector grows, the industry is seeking the conditions to grow. I hope the Government will be minded to support the sector and the economic benefits it could bring, particularly to rural Britain. This should not be considered an ask for wholesale legalisation, which is a completely different debate; it is an ask for consistency and coherence for the industry, and for access to medical cannabis for NHS patients.

We need the various strands in Government to be stitched together to provide support, rather than maintaining a strange patchwork of overlapping and clashing components. The UK Government and, where appropriate, the devolved Administrations should therefore accept the need to review the prescribing process, medical guidelines, acceptable tetrahydrocannabinol levels, and the overlapping legal and regulatory components. My specific ask of the UK Government is that they appoint a senior official to do so holistically, and that individual should be mandated to engage directly with the industry.

With coherent and consistent oversight, and by bringing the UK into line internationally, the medical cannabis sector could help to get rural Britain, and particularly constituencies such as mine, growing economically. In doing so, we could supply our domestic market with homegrown supplies and, even more importantly, relieve the pain and suffering of hundreds of thousands of our constituents, if they could access the prescriptions they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell]

I feel that we have had a very useful debate. Like you, Mr Stringer, I chair these sittings and it is extremely good to get half an hour from a Minister rather than five minutes. Although it was not necessarily comfortable for him, we were able to cover a lot of ground. Whether deliberately or otherwise, he came back to one of the issues that I raised, which was the need for co-ordination in Government on this issue. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) read out the list of Government Departments with an interest in this matter, and I am sure there are others that were missed, such as the Cabinet Office and the former bailiwick of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), the Law Officers. There is a need for co-ordination. I do not think the Minister was saying this, but we cannot push back to the industry and say, “Well, actually, it’s your job to co-ordinate all these different bits in Government.” The industry needs to have a clear “in” or conduit to Government to discuss and engage on these issues.

I fully understand, having been a Minister myself, that it is not possible to commit the Home Office—of all Departments, it is certainly not possible to commit the Home Office. We know how government operates, but we need to have a co-ordinated approach with which the industry can engage. Of course the Minister is right that this should not be economically driven in terms of the clinical decisions, but we have already made the decision, as my right hon. and learned Friend said. We are not debating whether this should be done; that decision has been made, and now we want to do it on a basis that benefits not only the patients, but the economy of the United Kingdom.

It is always poignant to hear individual examples. In any debate in which he participates, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is particularly good at bringing the discussion down to the personal level of individual examples, and I thank him for doing that today, as I do my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam. I have had the pleasure of meeting Alfie’s mother in my constituency. She is a very powerful advocate, but I do not believe, or think that anybody who has taken part in this debate believes, that the pain and suffering of anybody should be the requirement for us to do the right thing.

I was remiss in my opening remarks in not referencing the APPG, because I have engaged with it and particularly the hon. Members for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), who are also strong advocates on these matters.

Although I did not agree with everything that the hon. Member for Inverclyde said, which is often the case, what I did admire particularly was his passion for this subject, which came across clearly. It is shared by many hon. Members across the House.

I welcome the opportunity that we have had to air the issues, and the Minister’s full and well intentioned response, but we need to see action. I reiterate that the principal ask is for co-ordination within Government to take this forward. We are not requiring those in the industry and those lobbying for patient interests to manage the process across a wide range of Departments. That is one doable ask that could flow from today’s debate, and I hope that it will.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the economic contribution of medicinal cannabis.