Medical Cannabis under Prescription

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Jeff Smith

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

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

Forgive me for shuffling my papers, Madam Deputy Speaker; I was not expecting to be called quite so early in the debate. I am grateful to have been called early, but the House will have to bear with me. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing the debate, on their brilliant campaigning on this issue and on their co-chairpersonship of the all-party group on medical cannabis. I also congratulate the campaigners—some of whom are present—who have brought this issue into the public eye over the past year and are determined to make sure that it remains there.

[Kevin Brennan]

Like my hon. Friend, I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) might have been called next, as the co-chair of the all-party group—I think that is probably what was in his mind—and I was going to intervene on her to correct my earlier intervention, because I see that my constituents Rachel and Craig, who are Bailey Williams’s parents, have managed to attend today’s debate, despite the fact that they thought they would not be able to because of a medical appointment for Bailey. This gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to them for their relentless campaigning on his behalf. It is because of people like them that we are all here this evening.

[Jeff Smith]

I am delighted to have given way to my hon. Friend to allow him to pay that tribute to our visitors today.

I have received two letters from a constituent of mine, who has asked me to keep his name confidential. I am happy to give it to the Minister on a confidential basis. My constituent first wrote to me on this issue last September, after the Government accepted the principle that we should be able to prescribe medical cannabis, because the aim had not been fulfilled. He wrote:

“I have a grandson who suffers from a severe form of Crohn’s disease. He is in constant pain and finds that his present regime of opiate-based pain killing has difficult side effects. He tells me that his consultant doctor is willing to prescribe the cannabis-based alternative as soon as it is permitted. My grandson has never obtained cannabis illegally and does not intend to do so.”

My constituent wrote again to me in April. Things had moved on, but this probably illustrates the problem. In the second letter, he wrote:

“The position in my family is now relatively fortunate. Left in limbo for a long time by the NHS, and enduring frequent nausea and serious debility, my grandson used his own initiative. He found a private doctor specialising in pain control, a highly respectable man, formerly an NHS consultant, who gave him a prescription for a cannabis product. This has been successful. His symptoms are under control, his general health and capacity to eat are much improved, and he is being phased back into his job, which he had been likely to lose. I am meeting the financial cost to the tune of £695 per month currently. By tightening my belt I can do it, at least for a reasonable time to come. I never spent money to better effect in my life, and I am so grateful for medical science. But some of the sufferers on the TV programme have no financial resources. And for an old Socialist like me it goes against the grain to use private medicine.”

Madam Deputy Speaker, you do not need to be an old socialist to think that this is an unacceptable situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeff Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Yes, there may be risks, but we should look at the risks of some of the other treatments that people are using. Opiate treatments are much more risky than cannabis.

We need to find another way forward. We need to take into account the different types of evidence. We need, really, a bespoke medical response to this. I ask the Minister, how can we use the different types of evidence to get an evidence base that will satisfy Government and satisfy clinicians? How can we use, for example, the Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Act 2016? We also need a bespoke regulatory response. The question for the Minister is, why not? Other countries have done this, such as the Netherlands, Germany and Canada. They all treat cannabis differently from other products and other treatments. Holland has set up an office for medical cannabis to deal with the complexity of the issue and I do not see why we cannot do something similar.

[Kevin Brennan]

To follow up on the excellent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), in many of these instances, as with my constituents, we are talking about children who are suffering multiple seizures that are impacting on their mobility, weight and muscle tone through muscle wastage, and this is putting their lives at risk. Is it not therefore quite strange that the balance of risk does not seem to be taken into account when considering prescribing this treatment?

[Jeff Smith]

That is absolutely right. There is almost an irrational fear about the risk of cannabis compared with the risk of some of what we might call more conventional treatments that people are already using.