Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will hold discussions with the Chief Medical Officer on the potential merits of psilocybin's (a) medicinal and (b) therapeutic use.

There are no current plans for a meeting between Home Office Ministers and the Chief Medical Officer for England on the topic of psilocybin.

There is an established process for the development of medicines, overseen by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which enables medicines (including those containing Schedule 1 controlled drugs such as psilocybin) to be developed, evaluated in clinical trials and licensed based on an assessment of their safety, quality and efficacy before being made available to patients in the UK. Should an application be submitted for a marketing authorisation (product licence), it will ultimately be a decision for the MHRA whether to license psilocybin as a therapy.

In the context of these arrangements, officials from Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office liaise regularly on matters connected to controlled drugs in healthcare to inform advice to Ministers. The views of experts including the Chief Medical Officer can be taken into account as part of this process.