Medicinal Cannabis

Debate between Tonia Antoniazzi and Mike Penning

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning]

I completely agree on the medical profession and know exactly where the Home Office stood when I was at the Department. I would love to say that the whole of the Home Office and my civil servants in the narcotics part of it were thrilled by what I said in Westminster Hall all those years ago, but I can assure colleagues that they certainly were not, to say the least; fortunately, I had covered my back with the Home Secretary.

We need to move on from this, however. This is not about reform of the 1971 Act. It is about whether there is a group of children who we know get benefit from this, and whether, as we all know from our constituency postbags, there are other conditions that could also benefit from this type of oil with a THC product in it. That is where we are struggling.

We need to roll back this debate and talk, as I did at the start of my speech, about children—children who deserve the best possible start in life and just happen to have been born with a medical condition that the medical profession, in its infinite and great wisdom, has not quite got an answer for. This product is part of the answer, although it only alleviates the condition. As parents have said to me on many occasions, it does not take away the condition but it does let the children live a life as close to normality as possible; it is not normal, because it involves dropping oil on a little boy or girl’s tongue on a daily basis, but it is as normal as we can get.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

It was a pleasure to serve with the right hon. Gentleman as co-chair of the all-party group on medical cannabis under prescription. On the point he makes about children, we have Bailey Williams in Cardiff, a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and that case highlights that these children are no longer classified as children after four years; they become adults. Bailey Williams is now 18, and the question arises of how things will change for him in a different health system with different rights. What would the right hon. Gentleman say on that?

[Sir Mike Penning]

The hon. Lady was a brilliant co-chair with me for all those years; we agreed on most things even though there is a tiny number of things we do not agree on. The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I have a constituent who has now turned 18, although it is not the THC but another medical component that particularly helps her. People come out of the care of one part of the health service and there is a little bit of a transition period but there is very little research on the evidential base going forward, and we need to do that research.

Let me touch for a second on what has been said to me by senior medical people in the Department of Health and Social Care. They said, “We need to do trials, Mike. We need to use placebos. We need to find out whether this actually works or whether it doesn’t work.” What parent on this planet is going to take their child off a medication that actually works, with the risk that they may get a placebo, have a seizure and die? Is that where we are in the 21st century, really and truly?

We had a statement earlier from the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). We are a world leader in doing medical things. We have done things in this country around the vaccines that no one dreamed possible, yet we are talking about giving placebos—and those people were serious. I can tell the House that the parents were very serious, too. I cannot repeat some of the comments I got from some of the parents, but they quite rightly said—I will speak politely on their behalf—“Not in a million years.” Let us put it in those terms.

I know that the Minister will do her level best, but this is not about the Government taking over Epidiolex. Yes, they need to pay for research—I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) about that—and research in this area could change the whole way that pain is addressed and perhaps get us away from using so many opioids, but this is actually just about having trust in the expert who has written the prescription for a child who may well die if he does not get that oil with the THC component on prescription.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I am sorry for intervening on the right hon. Gentleman again. The NHS keeps asking experts, but those experts are not experts in medical cannabis; they are experts in the condition of epilepsy but have no insight into that. Where is the foresight and vision to help these children with intractable epilepsy?

[Sir Mike Penning]

I alluded earlier to the narrow-mindedness of people who have taken an oath to protect people and protect children. No one, I would have thought, goes into the medical profession to hurt people, but at the end of the day, we have a group of children—not thousands, but a small group—whose parents are crying out, “Please listen to my specialist. Please listen to me, as a parent trying to save my child’s life.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mike Penning]

rose—

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

rose—