Health Bill

Debate between Jeff Smith and Anna Sabine

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith (Manchester Withington) (Lab)]

Clauses 5 and 6 place duties on the Secretary of State to promote patient involvement, patient choice and innovation. My new clauses 86 and 87 would apply those principles to psychedelic-assisted therapy treatments involving schedule 1 controlled substances.

I have been pleased to be a trustee of the charity Drug Science, which has allowed me to talk to researchers who are looking at therapeutic treatments using what are called psychedelic drugs. Around the world there is growing evidence of the successful treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, mental health issues and end-of-life distress using these drugs. For some patients they are absolutely revelatory. They change lives for the better and can relieve the burden of those conditions on the wider health service.

Researchers tell me, however, that the barriers the current system puts in place really restrict research. Research involving schedule 1 controlled substances generally requires a Home Office licence, and the bureaucracy and inertia in the system adds delay, cost and an administrative burden to the extent that research grants are being lost because of delays.

The issue has already been considered. In 2023 the Home Affairs Committee recommended urgently moving psychedelic drugs to schedule 2 in order to facilitate research. Later that year, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended that research using schedule 1 drugs in universities and hospitals should be exempt from the Home Office domestic licencing requirement and should instead operate under schedule 2 controls. In 2025 the Government accepted the ACMD recommendations in principle. There is supposed to be a pilot of a proposed extension to test operational feasibility, but that has not happened. The Government said the policy work was under way and that further plans would be published in due course, but without a timetable for implementation. My new clause 86 would make it happen. Other jurisdictions are ahead of us on this issue. The US Department of Defence and the US Department of Veterans Affairs are already funding clinical trials for military personnel and veterans.

New clause 87 concerns compassionate access to treatment. International research has identified potential in some treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions and end-of-life distress. There is international precedent. The 2022 Canadian special access programme has allowed clinicians to request restricted drugs, including psilocybin and MDMA, to treat those conditions. We can learn from those experiences.

Finally, I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me to discuss these issues, and for her agreement on the principle of enabling the clinical research of these drugs and her commitment to get back to me to outline how the Government will take them further.

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

I will speak to new clauses 116 and 117, which I have tabled.

Clover Carkeet, from my constituency, is a delightful seven-year-old girl who has suffered from intractable epilepsy since she was 12 weeks old. Clover’s seizures could be controlled only by huge doses of steroids, leaving her very unwell, until her parents secured a private prescription for medical cannabis, reducing her seizures by 95%. Medical cannabis is legal and can be bought privately under NHS supervision, but it is not routinely available on the NHS. As a result, families are faced with an impossible choice: fund thousands of pounds a month to pay privately, or watch their child suffer while relying on the treatments available through the NHS. Why are parents being made to make that choice? Colleagues across the House, including the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), have long campaigned on the issue and support new clause 116, which calls on the Secretary of State to assess the availability of medical cannabis on the NHS for children. I hope the Government will support this new clause too.