Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to provide access to psilocybin for the treatment of (a) severe depression and (b) other health conditions.

The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), who have invested £1.1 million in a randomised controlled trial to examine if it is feasible, safe and effective to use psilocybin to treat people with treatment-resistant depression. The NIHR is supporting psilocybin research via the NIHR King’s Clinical Research Facility and the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, where researchers are developing and evaluating the efficacy and safety of psilocybin therapy for use in the National Health Service and other healthcare settings. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including the use of psilocybin in the treatment of severe depression and other chronic conditions.

Before any new medicine can be used to treat patients, it must go through a strictly monitored development process. Manufacturers of medicines are expected to conduct research and clinical trials, and medicines must undergo scrutiny by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency which will assess the safety, quality and efficacy of a product before a marketing authorisation (licence) may be granted. For a licence to be granted for a medicine the MHRA must receive a full marketing application from the applicant. In addition, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) evaluates all new medicines for clinical and cost effectiveness and makes recommendations about routine funding and use on the NHS. This is the foundation of NHS decisions about routine access and funding of medicines.