There is little room for solace amid the anguish caused by the move towards statutory regulation and the identification of HPC as regulator. At least some relief can be taken from the efforts of those ensuring a more critical and questioning voice is heard. Recent letters and articles by Paul McGahey (Therapy Today, September 2009), Andy Rogers (February 2009), Andrew Samuels (June 2009), Brian Thorne (May 2009) and most recently Barbara Shannon (October 2009) offer us some hope. These people are to be congratulated for putting up a fight on behalf of a silent majority.

The BACP membership is blessed with talented and well-known scholarly individual members. Yet there seems to be little response from such Fellows, senior practitioners or members with distinguished reputations. Why is it that few murmurings from these quarters can be heard? Do they believe statutory regulation via the HPC, professionalisation and bureaucratisation are a good thing? It was good to see Andrew Reeves using his position to highlight the point that the differentiation of counselling and psychotherapy forces us all, potentially, to take up a position of either aligning with, or not as the case would be for many of us, with the medical model.

Reeves candidly points out this is an issue of ‘power and status’. One cannot help wondering why, as evidenced by Lynne Gabriel’s swift response, BACP appears to have been propelled into action over this issue. This is clearly an opportunity for BACP to act on behalf of many of its members. As a result BACP can be seen to be fighting for something. The question is who is it fighting for? Is resolving the issue of differentiation important for clients? BACP seems willing to fight the HPC on some issues but not others, yet the differentiation issue seems less about client protection and more about organisational self preservation. An even more cynical view would be that BACP has taken up this fight because winning serves its interests very well.

More important than the differentiation issue, is the need to protect the public from statutory regulation via the HPC. With no evidence supporting it as a suitable means to protect the public, such a move would be unhelpful at best. Of course all responsible practitioners would want to avoid causing harm to a client; however, creating the illusion that clients will be safe because of a state registered system carries its own risks. As in wider society, the increasing dependence on other external sources to protect the vulnerable could serve to lessen the chances of clients following their own senses, thus limiting their ability to make their own judgements of perceived risk and threat. In addition to this, assimilation by the wider health profession could also come at great cost to the public. Is protecting a title really the best thing when the price we will have to pay involves moving further along the road towards medicalisation? Let us not forget that these issues are inextricably linked.

Getting caught up within the ‘spin’ of the debate regarding differentiation risks statutory regulation being ushered through on the ‘quiet’ and with minimal opposition being voiced. If successful in challenging the issue of differentiation, BACP will be able to claim a victory against the HPC. However, this victory will only be on behalf of some members; sadly, it will have failed the quiet majority. The BACP holds enough power and could still mount a challenge to the HPC over regulation and not just over differentiation. If this does not happen, it could appear that only the interests of the few are being served and that would eventually lead to further a breakdown in trust.

David Murphy