Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many private prescription items for unlicensed cannabis-based medicines have been prescribed and submitted to the NHS Business Services Authority in each month from November 2018 to August 2020.

The NHS Business Services Authority is unable to provide the number of National Health Service prescription items for unlicensed cannabis-based products dispensed in community pharmacy in England. This information is being withheld in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation, due to the number of items attributed to less than five patients and potential for patient identifiable information to be published.

313 private prescription items for unlicensed cannabis-based products were prescribed and dispensed in community pharmacy in England (November 2018 – February 2020). During the COVID-19 outbreak, the NHS Business Services Authority temporarily suspended the processing of private prescriptions of this nature, so data between March 2020 and August 2020 is currently unavailable.