I am aware that Phillip Hodson has worked hard for many years to raise public awareness of the value of counselling and psychotherapy, and he should be applauded for this. In a recent piece for a national newspaper (The Independent, 11 April 2009) he gave an eloquent description of the client-centred and co-operative nature of the therapeutic endeavour which I am sure most practitioners could sign up to. However in the same article, he went on to suggest that those opposed to Health Professions Council (HPC) regulation are ‘needlessly panicking’ or making ‘political points’. He also stated that opposition is coming from ‘older practitioners’ who ‘cannot come to terms with political correctness, safety guidelines and mandatory supervision’. 

After attending the recent inaugural conference of the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, I must disagree with this characterisation of both the argument against regulation, and those who are making it. At the conference, I encountered a wide range of practitioners of all ages and orientations, from trainees such as myself to those of long experience and high standing such as Professor Brian Thorne and Professor Andrew Samuels. Many were BACP members. I was struck by a widespread willingness to set aside professional hierarchy and theoretical allegiance in the interests of upholding what many believe to be fundamental principles. Nobody was arguing for the kind of unsupervised free-for-all that Hodson’s article seemed to imply might be the alternative to statutory regulation. 

Hodson’s description of therapy as ‘a safe space, perhaps for the first time in your life, where you can feel, think or say anything you like’, certainly resonated with my own experience as a client. I wholeheartedly agree that the relational depth and empathic witnessing which many of us value so highly, represent the very heart of therapy. It is of course exactly the kind of free and spontaneous interaction that underpins such genuine encounter, which many feel may be damaged by over regulation of the practitioner’s role in the relationship. 

HPC regulation seems inextricably linked with the development of ‘occupational standards’, which attempt to reduce what is inevitably subjective and context-dependent to a set of measurable skills, competencies and outcomes. It seems very unrealistic to think that such a process of micro-management will have no effect on the mindset of the counsellor and thus on the quality of the therapeutic relationship. Moreover, those who do not subscribe to a ‘medical model’, understandably find the compulsory regulation of their activities as a ‘health profession’ incongruent and coercive.
The case against regulation and institutionalisation has of course been comprehensively argued elsewhere.^{1, 2, 3}

A credible case in favour has yet to be made. In fact, as recently as 2007, BACP was itself opposing HPC involvement, stating: ‘BACP does not have confidence that the HPC will deliver effective regulation of the psychological therapies. This view is shared by all the major professional associations in the field, which together represent circa 100,000 practitioners.’⁴

Two years on and it seems everything has changed. HPC regulation, it is now said, will enhance ‘public protection’, and this principle seemingly overrides all other concerns. If this were really the case, in this age of ‘evidence based practice’, would anybody care to produce some evidence?