Thank you for publishing a good spread of arguments for and against statutory regulation in the May issue. They helped me to get off the fence and, somewhat to my surprise, get into the ‘for’ camp. Whilst there may be risks in being regulated by the HPC, therapy is a profession and in the real world professions get regulated in some shape or form.

Despite all the fine words and noble principles expressed by the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, its position looks questionable in a number of ways. To say that ‘there is no solid research demonstrating widespread abuse by practitioners’ may be literally true but surely misses the point. There is abuse in the therapy profession, as there is in all professions, and there needs to be a robust system to deal with it. Of course the Government wants that to be a unified system.

On top of this, the Alliance does not seem to be offering an alternative, which makes it look like a group of uncooperative rebels rather than a serious voice with a reasoned strategy. If it wants self-regulation, it is being a trifle optimistic given the current economic and political climate.

But the biggest hole in the Alliance case is that they are opting out before seeing what actually happens. Would it not be better to give statutory regulation a chance, and if the awful things that are feared come to pass, then to make a stand and if necessary leave the HPC to set up an alternative system of regulation? This would surely send a more powerful message to whatever forces might want to bureaucratise the practice of therapy than refusing to play ball in the first place.

The therapy world is already very divided and the Alliance’s position threatens to divide it still further. No group that might want to dominate needs to ‘divide and rule’ – we have already divided ourselves. If the profession would put aside its endless differences for the greater good, it might be a lot stronger. It would be better able to get what it wanted in negotiating with the Government, and better able to stand up to the tendency of single modalities to seek overly dominant positions. It is a great tragedy that we seem constitutionally unable to unite as a profession – a tragedy that has a direct effect on the quality, depth and extent of therapy available to the public through the NHS and other organisations.