Filibustering Tory MPs block Labour bill to improve medical cannabis provision

The government has blocked legislation sponsored by Labour MP Jeff Smith to provide better access and medical evidence for the use of cannabis treatments after Tory MPs stalled the debate to prevent a vote on the bill.

Introducing the medical cannabis (access) bill today, Smith said it would mean “significant numbers of people who would benefit from being prescribed medical cannabis on the NHS aren’t able to get the prescriptions that they need”.

Today was the ‘second reading’ of the bill, which is where MPs debate its principles. Conservative MPs filibustered until the debate ran out of time, thereby blocking the vote, meaning that the bill will not proceed.

Convention dictates that the minister will respond to points made in the discussion at the end of the debate but Tory MPs talked for so long that the government did not have time to contribute. Backbench Tory Sally-Ann Hart spoke for more than 50 minutes.

The government legalised medical cannabis in 2018 after several high-profile campaigns by families with children with severe intractable epilepsy. Just 3% of prescriptions issued over the past three years are thought to have been provided on the NHS, however.

With private prescriptions costing between £1,500 and £2,000 a month, many families are forced to rely on crowdfunding to cover the bill for their treatment. Smith’s proposed legislation attempted to tackle this problem.

His bill would have created a register of GPs to complete training to make them eligible to prescribe medical cannabis. Currently, the medicine is prescribed by specialist doctors. It would have also set up a commission to propose a framework for the assessment of cannabis-based medicines for licensing.

Andy McDonald made an impassioned call for Conservative MPs not to ‘talk out’ the legislation today, as they had been instructed by the government to do. He recounted his experience of losing his son to epilepsy.

“I don’t know whether medical cannabis would have helped him, had we even known about it at the time. But I will do everything I can to assist families in their determination to get the medication that their children need,” he said.

“I recall so vividly calling the ambulance and having him whisked off to hospital, where the consultant told us that we’d better call a priest. And then for 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 just bitterly regret that I have not shown the courage and the determination of people like Hannah Deacon in securing that medication for her child.”

Deacon’s son was the first NHS patient given a long-term licence for medicinal cannabis in 2018. Just three such prescriptions have been issued since then. Deacon recently urged Sajid Javid to ensure that more families can benefit.

Correction: This article was amended on December 14th to reflect that John Spellar made a point of order about his own bill to ban trophy hunting, rather than Jeff Smith’s bill.