Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of allowing children to be issued medical cannabis prescriptions on the NHS.

Licensed cannabis-based medicines, that have been proved effective in clinical trials and judged cost-effective by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), are routinely available on the National Health Service, including for people aged over two years old with certain types of epilepsy. However, clinical guidelines from NICE demonstrate a clear need for more evidence to support routine prescribing and funding decisions for unlicensed cannabis-based medicines.

We continue to call on manufacturers to conduct research to prove if their products are safe and effective and we are working with regulatory, research and NHS partners to establish clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of these products.