Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has any plans to make ketamine available on the NHS for people with treatment-resistant depression.

There are no current plans to make ketamine routinely available on the National Health Service for people with treatment-resistant depression. To be prescribed routinely within the NHS, the manufacturer of a ketamine-based medicine would need to apply for and be granted a marketing authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for this indication.

Ketamine is currently only licenced by the MHRA as an anaesthetic for diagnostic and surgical procedures in adults and children.