Oral Answers to Questions

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Member makes an important point. The safety of our staff in the national health service is important, including those in urgent and emergency care departments, as well as the ambulance services. He is absolutely right to point that out, and it is never acceptable for anyone, including patients, to be violent towards staff.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking to increase access to mental health services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

We are investing a record amount in NHS mental health services, committing £2.3 billion extra a year for the expansion and transformation of services in England, which will enable 2 million more people to access mental health support.

[Jeff Smith]

If only the reality was that rosy. The entire sector is calling out for reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. With our mental health services in crisis, why did the Government scrap the long-awaited and overdue mental health Bill, which could have started to alleviate pressures on trusts by reducing the numbers of people detained inappropriately and making services more fit for purpose? Is it not true that we need a Labour Government to take action on this issue?

[Mr Speaker]

It is going to be a long year.

Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who made an interesting speech. He talked about the progress in primary care in his area. Sadly, I do not see such progress in south Manchester, where patients and GPs are in despair at the state of primary care after 13 years of Conservative-led Governments. We desperately need real change and new ideas for public services. All that we have is a damp squib of a King’s Speech, devoid of ideas and more interested in wedge issues than the country’s best interests.

I will start by looking at measures that relate to the NHS—two that are not in the Bill and one that it is. As a number of Members have said, it is desperately disappointing that there was no mental health Bill in the King’s Speech. This was an opportunity to strengthen safeguards and give new protections to vulnerable people. Alongside the demise of the mental health plan, the absence of such a Bill is a worrying signal about the Government’s priorities for mental health. I am really pleased that the Labour shadow Secretary of State has pledged that we will introduce a mental health Bill in a future Labour King’s Speech.

I also would have liked to have seen a measure to address the crisis in medical cannabis. It is now five years since medical cannabis was legalised in this country, and we have a handful of NHS prescriptions—literally; they can be counted on the fingers of one hand—while many thousands of people are getting private prescriptions for medical cannabis and paying hundreds and hundreds of pounds a month, costing them an absolute fortune. We absolutely need to address that. I recommend the private Member’s Bill that I introduced a couple of years ago to address that issue as a model for the Government to start from.

A measure that was in the speech was the tobacco and vapes Bill. I will always support measures to reduce the scourge of smoking, and I welcome measures to reduce the 5 million disposable vapes that are used every week in this country. We will certainly lend the Government the votes that they may need to get the measures through. Much play has been made of the idea that nobody under the age of 14 will ever be able to buy cigarettes legally. The emphasis has to be on the word “legally”. I have often stood up in this Chamber to say that prohibition often does not work. I really hope that the Government will give careful consideration to the impact that the Bill will have on the illegal market and organised criminal gangs—a point made earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). We will certainly support the Bill, but this needs to be done carefully.

Let me turn to probably the single most disappointing measure in the King’s Speech. With COP28 coming up, the speech was an opportunity to set out a platform for a greener future. The Government could have introduced measures to make it easier to build onshore windfarms, to sort out the electricity grid so that we can all be connected to clean energy, or to bring in a programme of energy efficiency and low-carbon heating. Those are all things that a Labour King’s Speech would have done. Instead, we got the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which will allow oil and gas companies to bid for new licences to drill for fossil fuels every year, riding roughshod over our net zero plans.

Last year, British households were the worst hit by the energy crisis in western Europe because of our high dependency on gas. For millions of households, bills this year will be even worse. The Government briefing says that the Bill will

“reduce reliance on volatile international energy markets”.

It will not. There is not enough gas and oil in our offshore fields to make any difference to the prices set by the international markets. The Government themselves have already admitted that the Bill will not do anything to reduce energy bills, and it rubbishes our efforts to fight the climate crisis.

Every respected body, from the International Energy Agency to the UN, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Climate Change Committee, has warned of the dangers of awarding new oil and gas licences. The Tories’ own former net zero tsar, the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), said:

“There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield.”

A former Chair of the Climate Change Committee warned earlier this year that Government inaction on net zero

“has been compounded by continuing support for further unnecessary investment in fossil fuels.”

The Bill will not deliver energy security. The way to deliver energy security is to boost our economy and stake our future on clean energy. That is what Labour will do, upgrading a million homes with our warm homes plan and delivering a clean electricity system by 2030.

I have talked about the worst aspects of the King’s Speech; let me mention some positives. Leasehold is a centuries’ old, unfair system. Almost every country in the world apart from ours has ended it. Britain’s feudal leasehold system has left millions trapped in expensive housing with ever-increasing service charges and fees. It is the root cause of the abuse and poor service that so many homeowners experience at the hands of managing agents, and Labour has been pressing the Government to fundamentally reform and overhaul the leasehold system for a long time.

I welcome the Government’s announcement that they will finally reform leasehold. It is long overdue, and they have not gone far enough; the Government’s new rules will apply only to new homes, and there is nothing to rule out commonhold for new flats, which make up the majority of leasehold properties. A Labour Government would fundamentally and comprehensively reform the leasehold sector. The system needs a complete overhaul so that existing leaseholders can collectively purchase more easily and move to commonhold if they wish. Labour would enact the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage in full.

I welcome the Renters (Reform) Bill, which is also long overdue. I am concerned about delays to some of the key measures, particularly section 21 no-fault evictions, which continue to leave renters vulnerable at the height of a cost of living crisis. Labour would strengthen the Bill to ensure that it meets the scale of the housing crisis that the Government have presided over, but we welcome reform to the rental market.

I warmly welcome the Football Governance Bill. Our national game has needed reform for years to protect the clubs that are at the heart of our communities. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on her excellent fan-led review, and I am really pleased that the Government’s White Paper contains most of her recommendations, particularly on the key issues of independent regulation and the protection of clubs’ heritage assets. My personal view is that more could have been done on financial redistribution, particularly the transfer levy. It is a shame that that was not mentioned in the White Paper. Perhaps after the consultation and when the Bill progresses, the Government can look at that again, so that we can really get the money that needs to go down the pyramid to support grassroots football. We welcome that Bill, look forward to its becoming law and will work with the Government to make it happen, because that is the right thing to do.

I will not test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, so in two lines I will mention two more Bills: the Media Bill—excellent. I am pleased that we are finally getting a Bill to protect public service broadcasting, but I am disappointed that a ban on conversion therapy has not been introduced. That is a betrayal of LGBT people who have been promised it by countless Tories, including Ministers, for a long time, yet that broken promise puts people at risk.

I will close by mentioning the future. We knew the Prime Minister is a fan of “Star Wars” but we did not know that he is a fan of “Back to the Future”. Lord David Cameron—really? He was the future once, but does anybody really think he is the answer to this country’s problems or that he is the change we need? No, Madam Deputy Speaker. We need real change in the future but that change has to be a Labour Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

17. What steps he is taking to improve waiting times for cancer treatment.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

20. What steps he is taking to improve waiting times for cancer treatment.

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)]

Improving cancer treatment waiting times is a top priority for this Government, and it is a key focus of our elective recovery plan, backed by an additional £8 billion in revenue funding across the spending review period. In August 2023, cancer treatment activity for first treatments stood at 105% of pre-pandemic levels on a per working day basis, and the 62-day backlog has fallen 30% since its peak in the pandemic.

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and, of course, I recognise the importance of early diagnosis and treatment. Cancer checks are up by a quarter on pre-pandemic levels, and in August more than 91% of patients started their first cancer treatment within a month of a decision to treat. We have opened 123 additional community diagnostic centres and an additional 94 surgical hubs, but I accept, of course, that there is much more that we need to do.

[Jeff Smith]

The Minister has again been referring to “pre-pandemic levels”. Ministers have a tendency to blame covid for increased waiting times, including in respect of cancer. I presume they are aware that the number of cancer patients not getting care on time rose in every year since the Conservatives came to power before the pandemic. How can the Government defend that dreadful record?

[Will Quince]

We are continuing to support NHS England in increasing cancer treatment capacity. As I say, I recognise the importance of early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. NHS England has instructed integrated care boards to increase and prioritise the diagnostic and treatment capacity for cancer. As of the middle of this year, we have 93 additional surgical hubs that are currently operational and 123 additional community diagnostic centres, which have delivered more than 5 million additional tests since July 2021, but we know and recognise that we need to do more.

Mental Health Treatment and Support

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

It has been a pleasure to work with the hon. Member on the draft Mental Health Bill. However, as I will say later in my speech, I have little confidence that the draft Mental Health Bill will move beyond the draft stage. We need to debate the issues in the House, to ensure that what we know needs to be fixed is actually fixed, so that we can help people in our communities, including black people, who are more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act, and people with autism and neurodiversity, who are mistreated simply as a result of having that diagnosis, so that their lives can be better lived. We need these issues to come before the House, so that we can debate them and move forward.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about the demand on A&E, but there is demand on other public services as well. When I have been out with the police in south Manchester, I have been shocked by the sheer amount of time they spend dealing with people in mental health crisis. I am sure we all know the amount of time our staff spend dealing with people in mental health crisis. Does she agree that it is a false economy not to invest properly in mental health services, because of the impact on other public services?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point; he is right. It is also a false economy because of the impact mental ill health has on families. Not investing in one person’s mental ill health not only has an impact on their working and earning potential, but has a knock-on impact on that of their parents, siblings and other family members. People are currently sitting at home on suicide watch for their children because they cannot get access to the timely help and treatment they need. This is Tory Britain.

What has been the response from the Government to these alarming facts? Ministers have junked the 10-year mental health plan and binned thousands of responses to the consultation. Seni’s law, set out in a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), passed unanimously, but it has not been fully implemented. It was passed almost five years ago and there have been three subsequent Ministers, and yet we are in the highly unusual situation where it has not been commenced in full. Who exactly is against the monitoring of the disproportionate use of force? The House certainly was not against it when the Bill was passed.

The Government have announced plans for new mental health hospitals, but those new hospitals are not new. The hospitals announced on 25 May—Surrey and Borders, Derbyshire and Merseycare—were already in the pipeline.

Let us talk about the Minister’s own patch, to really see the scale of the issue. At his closest hospital, adults experiencing a mental health crisis waited 11,000 hours in A&E last year. There are over 5,000 children and 40,000 adults stuck on mental health waiting lists across his integrated care board. Thousands of local people were turned away from services before treatment; I am sure the Minister will agree that that is unacceptable. As ever, we have smoke and mirrors when we need bricks and mortar. If this seems bleak, that is because it is.

Oral Answers

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)]

I can certainly ensure the House that we are seeking a mutually beneficial voluntary scheme that supports patient outcomes, a strong life sciences industry and a financially sustainable NHS. We have been working directly with industry to understand the impact of changes to VPAS on investments into the UK life sciences sector, and we remain firmly committed to VPAS, which, it is important to say, has saved the NHS billions of pounds and saved millions of lives by supporting patients with life-threatening conditions and giving them rapid access to new medicines.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

T3. I was very grateful to get fantastic treatment for a detached retina at the brilliant Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, but 551 patients have lost their sight as a result of delayed eye doctor appointments since 2019, and the backlog for ophthalmology appointments is, at 630,000, the second largest in the country. The treatments are there, but what will the Government do to sort that problem out?

[Steve Barclay]

First, I very much welcome the good care that the hon. Gentleman received, and it is great to see him back in the Chamber. On the wider issue, that is why we have an elective recovery plan, in which we have applied a boost in capacity, particularly through the surgical hubs. We are looking at how we build greater resilience, especially in winter, when elective beds are often under pressure. We are also investing in areas such as eye treatment, and we are rolling out through Getting It Right First Time a programme of improvement in a range of areas, including that one.

NHS Dentistry

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree wholeheartedly with him on that point. I will come on to it as I set out what I believe needs to be done to improve the situation, but I think he and I are very much on the same page on that issue.

First, I will address the issue of funding. There is a need to secure a long-term funding stream. In recent years, the NHS dental budget has not kept up with inflation and population growth. Since 2008, NHS dentistry has faced cuts with no parallel elsewhere in the NHS, and the British Dental Association states that it will take £880 million per annum to restore the service to 2010 levels. I acknowledge the budgetary challenges that the Chancellor faces, but the reform process is doomed from the start without an appropriate level of investment. There is a need for a protected budget, and any funding that is clawed back must be kept in dentistry.

Secondly, a strategic approach should be adopted towards recruitment and retention, with a detailed workforce plan being put in place.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) on securing this debate. There is a crisis in south Manchester and across the country in trying to access NHS dentists. There are highly trained dentists from abroad who can help. I have some constituents who were trained at the dental faculty of the University of Hong Kong, which is among the top three faculties in the world—it has an English curriculum—but they cannot get registered or access the licence exams. I understand that the Government have said they are going to simplify the registration process. Would he join me in urging the Government to act very quickly to make that happen?

[Peter Aldous]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which came at an appropriate time. Indeed, he may well have been reading my speech, because that was the next point I was coming to. In the short term, we need to be stepping up recruitment from abroad. Although the legislation tabled earlier this month to streamline the process of recognising overseas qualifications is welcome, that will not address the problem on its own, and I hope that when he responds to the debate, the Minister will address that issue. In the longer term, we must improve dentistry training ourselves and ensure that it is available throughout the country. In that regard, the proposals being worked up by the Universities of East Anglia and of Suffolk are to be welcomed.

Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) said, there is a need for a new NHS dental contract. It is welcome that discussions have started on revising the contract, but there is a worry that the Government are looking only at marginal changes, when ultimately a completely new contract is required. At present, the NHS contract is driving dentists away from doing NHS work. Its target-based approach is soul destroying for so many, and it needs to be replaced with an agreement that has prevention at its core.

That leads me to the fourth and penultimate component of a new system of NHS dentistry: the public promotion of the importance of good oral health, and looking after our teeth from the cradle to the grave. Denplan proposes that the Government and NHS should lead a public education campaign to emphasise the importance of oral health. There should be provision in the aforementioned new contract for dentists to go into schools, as well as into care and nursing homes. When economic conditions allow, let us be imaginative and exempt children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste from VAT. That can embed good oral healthcare at an early stage of life. It is welcome that the Health and Care Act 2022 facilitates the roll-out of water fluoridation projects, and the Government should work proactively with water companies to ensure that is universal.

Finally, there is a need for clear transparency and full local accountability for overseeing and commissioning NHS dentistry services. I acknowledge the hard work and great effort of those working at NHS England, but we need to replace a system that is inaccessible, opaque, and confusing. The Health and Care Act provides us with the means of doing that, and it is welcome that from next April, many integrated care systems will be taking on responsibility for local NHS dentistry. That is the right approach, as good oral healthcare is essential for good general health and wellbeing, and inextricably linked to primary, mental and emergency care. It is vital that those involved in dentistry are represented on integrated care boards.

Across the country there are a multitude of dental deserts. If we do nothing, if we apply the odd sticking plaster here and there, those will turn into one large Sahara. We owe it to those we represent to ensure that does not happen. That means that we need as a matter of urgency a blueprint plan for new NHS dentistry. That will not be delivered in one fell swoop, but we need clearly to lay down the route path and start taking meaningful strides down it. With that in mind, the motion calls on the Government to embark on that journey and report back on their progress in three months’ time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and likewise to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who has campaigned vigorously this issue. We now have the outline business case from the trust, and we are reviewing it at pace to ensure that we can deliver the investment in both of Shropshire’s hospitals that they need to continue to serve my hon. Friend’s and colleagues’ constituents.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

My 90-year-old constituent, Jimmy, fell in his garden recently and broke his hip. When his family rang 999, they were told that it would be up to 14 hours before an ambulance could attend. The family got the fire brigade out after two and a half hours to sort him out. When the Government going to get a grip on the crisis in our ambulance services?

Medical Cannabis: Alleviation of Health Conditions

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

I start by congratulating my friend the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), on securing the debate and on his excellent introduction, and my friend the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), my co-chair of the all-party group for drug policy reform, on his wide-ranging assessment of the various complex issues involved in this difficult problem.

It is unusual to have a debate on the same subject on two successive days. The Minister was in Westminster Hall yesterday when we spoke about the slightly more specific issue of cannabis-based treatments for treatment-resistant epilepsy in children. She will have heard the heart-rending stories, which we have heard many times, of the impact of epilepsy on some of those children and their families, with the fear of hundreds of seizures a day, and the way that it completely takes over families’ lives.

We heard very moving testimony from my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) about the death of his son as a result of epilepsy. That was all very difficult. We also heard about the incredible transformation of lives that can be possible as a result of cannabis-based medical products that treat treatment-resistant epilepsy, and the impact on families. I am talking not just about Alfie and the fact that he is no longer in seizures and that he is able to behave like a normal naughty little boy, as he is described, but about Hannah and her family and the fact that she is able to get back to a normal life. That reflects not just the importance of the impact on families, but the wider savings to the public purse through the reduction in hospital visits and the ability of carers to return to work and become part of society again.

We heard about the frustrations of families unable able to get NHS prescriptions and the costs of private prescriptions. I have a constituent who is not a wealthy man, but he pays about £700 a month for cannabis-based products for his grandson; the family were able to get a private prescription, but not an NHS one. We need to help not only all these vulnerable young people, but their wider families too. As my friend the hon. Member for Reigate said, those people are the tip of the spear and get the publicity, but epilepsy is not the only condition that cannabis-based medical products can help. There is abundant evidence from around the world about the effectiveness of cannabis-based medicines against all kinds of conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, pain, anxiety and nausea. There are tests on Tourette’s and there are lots of other conditions that can be treated with cannabis.

In June 2018, Dame Sally Davies—who was then chief medical officer and chief medical adviser to the Government—was looking at the issue for the Government. She said that there was “conclusive evidence” in support of the use of medical cannabis for a number of conditions and “reasonable evidence” in others. It is safe and effective to prescribe these medicines and patients are being given prescriptions via the private route. As we heard earlier, 10,000 private prescriptions have been issued in the UK, but we still face a blockage, as a very tiny number of NHS prescriptions have been agreed. It is a great frustration that the public and many Members may feel that this problem has been solved, when it has not.

I appreciate that there are a number of problems. The Minister has already identified one of them to me: the reluctance of clinicians to prescribe. That is a real problem. The question for us is, how do we give them that comfort to prescribe? There are a couple of ways. The first is evidence, to which I will return in a minute. Another is training. We heard from my friend the hon. Member for Reigate about the difficulty of training clinicians on these issues. The endocannabinoid system—I can never pronounce that word—is a very complex system and it is not part of routine medical training. The 147 different cannabinoids that affect that system are difficult to isolate and the interrelation between them is difficult to identify, but there are people who can provide such training. We need to ensure that it is available to the clinicians, GPs and others who would like to be involved.

Even when a specialist consultant—somebody who is on the register of consultants—has agreed to prescribe, there is another barrier. They have to go to the next level for approval by a higher authority, as I think it is called, which means the trust, the clinical commissioning group or sometimes NHS England, although it is usually the trust. A number of prescriptions have been blocked at that stage, and that is a barrier that private prescribers do not have to surmount, which is a real issue. It seems to be a fault that is built into the system, and I am not convinced that it is a necessary barrier.

We have a set of problems to solve. The Minister knows that I have a private Member’s Bill, the Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill, which is due for debate on 10 December. I hope that it might be an opportunity to address the issue. Somewhat unusually, I guess, I have put that at the disposal of the Government and asked if they will work with me to use this legislative opportunity to find a way forward. I have my own thoughts on how a private Member’s Bill might address the problem and I have made some suggestions that have not yet been supported by Ministers, although in fairness they were supported by the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill). I welcome any suggestions or ideas about how we might frame the Bill to get around the problems. Even if we can only make baby steps, I am happy to work with the Government to find a way forward. I really want to make progress, so I make that offer to the Minister again today. I am grateful to her for saying that she will meet me to discuss the issue in the near future.

Let me return to the issue of evidence. As I have said, there is a lot of evidence out there, from around the world, about the effectiveness of cannabis-based products. Lots of work is going on. As the hon. Member for Inverclyde mentioned, the charity Drug Science has a fantastic, academically robust evidence gathering research project called Project Twenty21, in which 1,800 people are currently being treated. I pay tribute to Drug Science. I should declare my interest as a trustee of that charity—an unpaid trustee, of course. The study is an excellent piece of work to try to create a better body of evidence on the issue.

The matter comes down to the medical approvals system in this country, which emphasises so strongly double-blind randomised controlled trials—rightly so, as they are seen as the gold standards of trials. However, that system is set up to look at pharmaceutical products, not at something like whole plant extract medicines. As I mentioned earlier, cannabis contains 147 different cannabinoids, plus terpenoids and various other elements. It is quite a complex interaction on the nervous system. Sometimes a treatment will only work for a particular individual, and individuals have to work out their best balance of treatment.

It is difficult to have randomised controlled trials for such medicines. Leaving aside the moral issue of taking young people who are being treated off their medicine to take a placebo, if it is even possible to get a placebo—from what I hear, I am not convinced that people can really have a placebo for this kind of trial—it is still just a really difficult thing to do. I am not an expert on pharmacology or neurology, but I have spoken to people who are, and some are doubtful that it would be possible to get effective, useful evidence from such randomised controlled trials on whole plant cannabis. It is quite a unique plant that has a unique set of interactions with the body, so it is difficult to carry out those trials effectively.

Randomised controlled trials are not the only method of approval. I am told that 72 drugs have made it on to the approved medicines list without that kind of double-blind controlled study, so there are ways of doing it. The problem is that none of those drugs are plant-based medicines. As I understand it, cannabis is pretty much unique, given the interaction of the elements within it. We need a unique way of looking at the problem and at the evidence.

I made a couple of suggestions to the former Minister about how we might gather evidence and I was knocked back because they might bypass our current system of medical approvals, but I am afraid I have become convinced that part of problem is the current system of medical approvals when it comes to cannabis-based medical products. As my friend the hon. Member for Reigate said, we need Ministers to be flexible and creative, maybe a bit radical—maybe brave, if that is not a word that has been outlawed after its use by Sir Humphrey Appleby. We need Ministers to look at this in a new way. I appreciate that it is really difficult and quite an intractable problem, but we have to look at new ways of breaking the logjam, assessing the evidence base and making it easier for specialists—and perhaps others, such as some GPs—to prescribe.

I appreciate that the Government do not want to give widespread approval for GPs to prescribe these medicines. They are worried about the pressure that GPs might come under from people wanting recreational cannabis; I think that is overstated. Perhaps with some specialist training by an approved body, we might have a register of GPs who are able to prescribe. Most conditions that can be treated by cannabis are what we might call GP conditions—things like pain and anxiety. A survey said that a quarter of GPs would be happy, with the right training, to prescribe medical cannabis. We need to look at how to give people other than specialist consultants on the register a way of prescribing. That is perhaps one way of tackling this problem. Looking at trying to expand the evidence is so important, because there is so much evidence out there. It may not be through randomised controlled trials, but there are lots of other ways we can gather evidence. There are also a number of ways we can build safeguarding into the system, which I am happy to discuss with the Minister, as that might alleviate some of the concern.

The evidence is all around us that cannabis-based products can help patients. Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are currently self-medicating. One of my relatives does that to treat their IBS. There are lots of conditions that people use cannabis to alleviate. The problem is that most are buying it illegally. It is probably high-THC skunk that they are getting on the streets, which is not the product that is best suited to them. We need to find a way to enable them to use a safer product. Again, my private Member’s Bill may be part of the solution.

I hope we can find a way forward because, as we heard earlier, this is a problem that ought to have been solved by now and has not been. If we do not have a concerted attack on this issue with some new thinking from Ministers, officials and others, then we are condemning people to continue in a situation where they are paying a fortune for their private product, going to illegal drug dealers, or condemned to pain or ill health from other conditions. We have to find a way forward, and I am very happy to work with the Government to try to do so.

Covid-19 Update

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

As I have said previously, we are opening up opportunities for children to get their vaccine, but I reassure the House that the school age immunisation service will not pay just one visit to schools; it will go back, because it realises it does not capture everyone the first time round.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

In her statement, the Minister twice used the phrase “prompt and proportionate”. It does not feel like the Government are acting very promptly, and there are surely proportionate measures that we can take now—we do not have to wait for the whole of plan B to be implemented. What would be disproportionate about making mask wearing compulsory in enclosed private spaces now?

Covid Vaccine Passports

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us hear from the former voice of the DJs of the north—Jeff Smith.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As somebody who worked in nightclubs for 25-plus years, let me tell the Minister that this is a recipe for chaos on the doors of nightclubs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said—and as I said to the Minister the other day—the Night Time Industries Association has said that this will cripple the industry. This industry has been massively hard hit and it relies on walk-up trade; this is going make it impossible for nightclubs to run.

Let me ask the Minister two questions. First, how does he define a nightclub, as opposed to a late bar with a DJ playing music? Secondly, there is no rationale for this—as the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) said, nightclubs have been open for weeks—so why close them now? Why require vaccine passport for nightclubs, as opposed to other crowded indoor venues, such as the Chamber and the voting Lobby of the House of Commons?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is an important question. As I said earlier, part of the trials gave us the confidence that we can do this and do it well. These passports have already been implemented for international travel and other countries in Europe have them for nightclubs. We think this is the right thing to do to help us transition the virus from pandemic to endemic status. We will be coming forward with the details for parliamentary scrutiny in due course.