Doubtless there will be an enormous response to the information relating to the proposed revised NICE guidelines for depression. Many people more learned and experienced than I will be able to argue the pros and cons of the evidence debate. But I have responded to BACP’s request to write to my MP because one thing strikes me as strange: here in Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation Trust, and probably in a number of other trusts in which IAPT programmes have been introduced, we have since November 2008 been collecting a tremendous amount of data.

Counsellors and IAPT workers alike are now administering the GAD-7, PHQ-9 and Work and Social Adjustment Scale at every session. At the end of therapy, clients are asked to complete a Patient Experience Questionnaire. If NICE is going to make decisions before this evidence has even begun to be examined, I wonder what we are doing it for. And what will happen if, when it is analysed, the outcomes do not support the stance taken by NICE and a number of counsellors have lost their jobs because their services have been decommissioned?