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• The decision to regulate counsellors and psychotherapists through the HPC is a government one as laid out in the White Paper Trust, Assurance and Safety. The focus is on public protection and despite professional organisations disputing whether the HPC is an appropriate regulator, the government has signalled its clear intention to go ahead with the process. It is within this context that BACP is working on behalf of its members to ensure the best outcome.
  
  BACP support the public protection principle, which is the purpose of statutory regulation. BACP has and does represent the views of its members. Some members oppose statutory regulation in principle. Some opposition is based on the fears of the impact regulation might have on practice and some is based on doubt about the HPC’s capacity to act appropriately with regard to fitness to practice issues. However, in discussions at regional consultation in all four home countries over the past three years, the majority of members have expressed support for statutory regulation – seeing it as a way to develop public protection, gain recognition and enhance training standards.
  
  Since 2004, BACP, together with other national accrediting and registering organisations, has been in regular discussions with the Department of Health and the HPC. We have presented and continue to present issues around statutory regulation in the HPC – for example, the position of voluntary counsellors, the appropriateness of a ‘health’ regulator for counselling and psychotherapy, the ‘medical’ terminology found in the HPC documentation, the nature of the HPC fitness to practice procedures. The HPC has revised the language of some of its publications as a result of such comments.
  
  BACP is a voluntary regulator and it is the voluntary nature of membership and accreditation which presents a weakness in terms of protecting the public.
  
  BACP recognises that neither statutory nor voluntary registration will prevent all abuses of professional practice. Much of the opposition to statutory regulation in the HPC in letters to Therapy Today focuses on the nature of the process with terms such as ‘bureaucratic and statistically managed’, ‘cultures of surveillance’, ‘the stress of monitoring and assessment’, ‘role bound rather than ethical’. Below are the HPC requirements of registration which do not differ greatly from those of BACP:
  
  ‘HPC registrants register once every two years and must be in practice or if not in practice they must meet the return to practice requirements as well as confirming that they continue to meet the HPC Standards of Proficiency and Continuing Professional Development requirements. All registrants are required to keep a record of their CPD and once they have been on the register for two years they become liable to be selected for audit. All HPC registrants must meet the standards of proficiency for conduct, performance and ethics.’

• Director of Regulatory Policy, BACP