Opium poppies bloom on Conservative MP Richard Drax’s land

Remarkable photos show a field of opium poppies blooming on an estate owned by a Conservative MP.

Acres of land owned by the Tory MP for South Dorset Richard Drax have been turned over to the poppies since 2011 to produce morphine for the NHS.

There is a shortage of the pain-killing drug in hospitals and swathes of the English countryside have been transformed into poppy fields.

The Home Office has granted a licence to a pharmaceutical company to grow and harvest the poppy heads in order to produce both codeine and morphine for the NHS.

Mr Drax’s estate in the heart of Dorset is one of more than 30 sites across the country where the poppies are now being grown.

And the warm and dry spring appears to have yielded the Tory MP a bumper crop as the flowers from the plants have transformed his fields into a sea of lilac.

Once the poppy heads are harvested and dried the seed pods inside are processed and turned into morphine and codeine.