Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many prescriptions for medicinal cannabis have been issued in the last 12 months.

There have been 2,655 items for licensed and unlicensed cannabis-based medicines issued on a National Health Service prescription, dispensed in the community and submitted to the NHS Business Services Authority for reimbursement for the period December 2018 to November 2019, the latest data available.

There have been 234 items for licensed and unlicensed cannabis-based medicines issued on a private prescription that have been submitted to the NHS Business Services Authority for reporting and monitoring purposes only for the period December 2018 to November 2019.

The NHS Business Services Authority does not hold data for prescriptions dispensed by hospital pharmacies. This information is not held centrally and not routinely published. Intelligence from NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Controlled Drugs Accountable Officers is that a low number of patients are receiving prescriptions for cannabis-based products for medicinal use in independent secondary/tertiary care in England. However, this data is not collected nationally or routinely published.