Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department plans to take in the next year to help ensure that children with severe epilepsy can access effective cannabis-based medications through the NHS.

The licensed cannabis-based medicine epidyolex is prescribed routinely for three forms of epilepsy, for patients aged two years old and above. However, clinical guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence demonstrate a clear need for more evidence to support routine prescribing and funding decisions for unlicensed cannabis-based medicines.

We continue to call on the manufacturers of these products to conduct research, and we are working with regulatory, research, and National Health Service partners to establish clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of these products, to enable evidence based prescribing decisions.