Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Friday 10th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher]

The hon. Lady perhaps needs to let me make some of my points. She keeps asking me, but I am genuinely trying to get there.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) for bringing forward this important debate. He spoke with power and passion about a very important issue. I want to touch on the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) made about the difficulties in decision making for clinicians on the frontline. I speak as a veterinary surgeon, cognisant of the difficulties in making rational, evidence-based decisions in our profession when we are looking at licensed products for the species we are treating and having to make tough decisions about when we go off-licence. I am very sympathetic to my colleagues in the medical profession wanting a large evidence base to make them feel comfortable about making those decisions. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is welcome that NICE has made some recommendations about some trials that can take place and that there are trials under way? That will try to help us improve and increase the evidence base to help clinicians on the frontline make rational decisions.

[Katherine Fletcher]

My hon. Friend anticipates a couple of points I was about to make. I am talking not just about the individual who is prescribing, but about the medical system. There are rightly in our wonderful NHS medically qualified people engaged in lots of layers—my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) talks about bureaucracy—but they are people who have taken the Hippocratic oath. That is not just the person on the one-to-one with patients; it goes all the way through the system, and that is what I am worried about, basically.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sally-Ann Hart]

My hon. Friend raises a very good point. I would add that perhaps the reason why GPs are not forthcoming when it comes to working with specialist doctors is that they want to prescribe medicines that they know have been rigorously tested and to be aware of the possible side effects. We have to be aware that GPs take an oath, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) said, and part of that oath is that they will not do anything that will damage a patient. If a GP cannot be sure of the side effects or sure that drugs have not been rigorously tested with clinical evidence, they will be less inclined to offer those drugs.

[Dr Hudson]

There has been a lot of commonality today in the quest for increased knowledge about what is going on and for improving the evidence base, but also for the confidence of practitioners in being able to prescribe. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would unite us across the House if there were a renewed impetus from the Government to increase the information for medical practitioners about what can be done, so more of them can be confident in doing it, as well as a renewed impetus for the funding for research trials? That would give us a common momentum towards what we are all hoping to achieve.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his points. I have now forgotten his first point—I apologise for that—but I will come on later to clinical trials and the funding for them. Could he repeat his first point?

[Dr Hudson]

It was about renewed impetus from the Government to improve the outreach of information to medical practitioners so that more of them are aware of the licensed products, their capabilities and the clinical indications. As a veterinary surgeon, I feel very sympathetic to my colleagues in the medical profession, who want to be able to treat their patients with the best evidence base and the best information possible. Ministers could renew the impetus for more information for practitioners, as well as more funding for research. Those were my first and second points.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend so much. I just want to reiterate that the chief pharmaceutical officer recently issued a reminder to clinical commissioning groups and NHS trusts in England, highlighting the fact that cannabis-based drugs are available. What my hon. Friend is suggesting is that GPs need to be given even more regular information.