Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-12-10
Topic: Health
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): I confess to having been depressed many a time in this Chamber, but after that last contribution I cannot remember feeling as low as I do at this moment. [Interruption.] I ask Members please to take this Bill seriously. It is not in any way about telling medical practitioners what to do. I ask them please to read the Bill. The proposition opposite the argument around placebos that we would somehow look to a cohort in some other jurisdiction for available children to participate fills me with absolute and utter horror I rise to speak in support of the Bill, and in doing so I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) on his masterclass. If anybody needs to understand what Members have tried to persuade this place to do over many years, they should read that speech in Hansard. It was a comprehensive account. But we are here yet again. With respect to the hon. Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), she has taken us back years in going back to the basics—to the very beginnings of this debate—and I regret that bitterly. My hon. Friend has brought forward a modest, focused and eminently reasonable Bill, which I trust and hope will gain the support of the entire House The application of medical cannabis extends to and is of benefit to those with conditions such as intractable nausea, vomiting and chronic pain, but I want to focus my remarks on cases of epilepsy. We have had many a debate in this place about medical cannabis and heard incredibly moving stories from families about its wonderful efficacy in response to severe treatment-resistant epilepsy. Only last month, we had an excellent debate in Westminster Hall, secured by the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), who spoke with such eloquence and forensic accuracy about the efficacy of these treatments. We also heard from the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), who has been a determined advocate in this campaign Notwithstanding the welcome change to the law to facilitate NHS prescriptions of medical cannabis, only three such prescriptions have been issued in the three years since 2018. As such, the parents of children with intractable epilepsy, knowing that the medical cannabis treatment they have procured works, with seizures much reduced or eliminated, have been left at breaking point emotionally and financially, having to find up to £2,000 a month to pay privately for this medicine. There can be no question but that those who issued those prescriptions did anything other than obey the Hippocratic oath None of us can imagine how on earth those loving parents cope with such massive costs. Up to £2,000 a month—that is the equivalent of an additional and very substantial mortgage; in fact, it would dwarf many people’s mortgage payments. Not even we MPs, on over £80,000 a year, could cope with that. How on earth can we expect those families to withstand those huge costs simply trying to keep their children alive and free from the ravages of seizures by accessing a known and proven prescriptive solution? That these families cannot secure NHS prescriptions for their children, when it has been proved beyond doubt that cannabis is efficacious, is a monumental shame. The campaign group End Our Pain rightly said that this saga has dragged on for far too long. Those families have petitioned, marched and campaigned with such dignity. They should not and must not be ignored The new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was pivotal in the change in the law when he was Home Secretary. I urge him, the Minister and the Department to give effect to that change and remove all barriers to getting medical cannabis to those patients. The Bill will make an invaluable contribution to increasing prescription capacity by pointedly freeing up one of the blockages in getting these vital prescriptions to the people who desperately need them and who so evidently benefit from them It is a simple Bill with a mere three substantive, but very precise, clauses. The overall effect will be, first, to require the General Medical Council to operate a register of general practitioners who may prescribe cannabis-based products in England, changing the position from prescription only by consultants. It will also require the GMC to set the criteria to include training and professional development requirements to enable GPs to be on the register. It is up to each GP to decide whether they participate The second limb of the Bill will establish a commission to bring forward a framework for the assessment of cannabis-based medicines and their suitability for NHS prescription, and it will task such a commission with recommending measures to overcome barriers to gaining access to cannabis medicines on the NHS. I am sorry that the hon. Member for South Ribble is not in her place My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington has made provision in such a commission for the careful consideration of evidence other than from conventional controlled trials, including from observational studies and other countries where cannabis-based medicines are more readily prescribed. This is not a case of licking a finger and sticking it in the air. It is about proper research on which we can rely. We have heard it explained to us how randomised trials are not the appropriate way to go about business. In any event, that being held up as the gold standard is certainly open to debate I am afraid that the mantra of conventional random trials is simply inhumane. We have a situation where patients and their families know that this works, but the current system is trapped in inflexible and flawed processes that badly fail epilepsy sufferers, who have to mortgage all that they have to pay for these prescriptions or continue to suffer the ravages of seizures and often some dreadful side effects of powerful drugs. This Bill is a careful step along the way in addressing one small part of the blockage to sufferers getting the right treatments Somewhat belatedly, I must declare an interest, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have a 26-year-old son with epilepsy and severe developmental delay and special needs as a consequence. I would like to explore further whether medical cannabis might be of assistance to him, but hitherto, the system is as resistant as the condition itself. He had two older brothers, one of whom we lost when he was just 16 years old, 15 years ago—colleagues will have heard me mention him before. I do not know whether medical cannabis would have helped him, had we even known about it then, but I will do everything I can to assist families right now in their determination to get the medication that their children need We were confronted with our beloved Rory locked in status. I recall so vividly calling the ambulance and having him whisked off to hospital, where the consultant told us we better call a priest, and then all of us, my wife Sally, my son Paddy and my daughter Rosie, holding Rory as he died. I never want to have any of those families suffer such an outcome. I bitterly regret that I have not shown the courage and determination of people such as Hannah Deacon in securing that medication for her child. How I wish I had been as wise as she. I beg right hon. and hon. Members not to talk this Bill out today, as they have been instructed to do, but to do the right thing and help to take this small step today, to remove one of the barriers placed in the way of people so desperately in need of these treatments and to give them access to this life-changing and indeed life-saving treatment.