Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important issue. The subject of the abuse of legal gender recognition processes has been raised a number of times in several different ways. The Government want to make the legal gender recognition process less intrusive and bureaucratic for transgender people, but at the same time to ensure that we protect women from abuse. As I understand it, the consultation is ongoing until tomorrow and I encourage my hon. Friend to feed his concerns into that.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On 1 November, importantly, cannabis-based medicines will be able to be prescribed without licence, but some patients, including Bailey Williams, a young boy from my constituency whose mother is Rachel Rankmore, have consultants who appear to be unwilling under any circumstances to prescribe cannabis-based medicines. May we have a statement from the Health Secretary about whether we can make available to these patients NHS facilities and consultants who would be willing to consider prescribing such medicines in order to relieve terrible suffering and save lives?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am very sympathetic to what the hon. Gentleman says. As he will know, the Home Secretary acted very quickly to ensure that cannabis for medicinal purposes could be made available very quickly and he has taken steps to do that. However, I encourage the hon. Gentleman to raise any specific concerns he has about NHS professionals who may be unwilling to prescribe directly at Health and Social Care questions next Tuesday.