The government has ruled out issuing a medical cannabis licence to a six-year-old boy whose rare form of epilepsy improved after taking the drug abroad.

Alfie Dingley has a form of childhood epilepsy (PCDH19) which triggers multiple serious seizures. Only nine boys have been diagnosed world wide and at one point he had 3,000 seizures and 48 hospital visits in a year.

Alfie's grandmother has described the condition as “a death sentence” as the amount of steroids currently needed to treat it can eventually lead to psychosis, organ failure and death.

Last September, Alfie, from Kenilworth in Warwickshire, went to the Netherlands to take a cannabis-based medication prescribed by a paediatric neurologist, and saw his seizures reduce in number, duration and severity.

MPs on the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on drug policy reform have now called on the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to issue a licence for Alfie to continue taking the medication, which he is currently not permitted to have in the UK.