Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the paper entitled Single-Dose Psilocybin for a Treatment-Resistant Episode of Major Depression, published in 2022, if he will ask the Chief Medical Officer to assess the (a) medicinal and (b) therapeutic utility of psilocybin.

As it says in the conclusion of the paper “Larger and longer trials, including comparison with existing treatments, are required to determine the efficacy and safety of psilocybin for this disorder.” When new treatments are sufficiently developed, there are existing mechanisms in the United Kingdom to licence those treatments and determine their cost effectiveness and use. These are the correct routes to follow, once the evidence is sufficiently developed.