Ten-Year Drugs Strategy

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

A shiny new 10-year strategy sounds good, but the Government also need to address unfinished business. Three years after the Minister’s Government legislated for medical cannabis on the NHS, why have only three prescriptions ever been written for it, leaving families broke, having shelled out privately to fund their kids’ amelioration of pain?

[Kit Malthouse]

That is a matter for the Department of Health and Social Care, but, where requests have come to me to facilitate the acquisition of those products for affected families who need them, we have moved heaven and earth to do so as quickly as we could. The hon. Lady might be interested to know that we are reaching the end of a piece of work by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs on barriers to research and medical exploitation of particular compounds. I hope that we will be able to publish that soon and cover some of the regulatory hurdles that she points to.