State Imposition and Statutory Regulation

The British Psychological Society web-site says: "Statutory regulation of psychologists is a stronger form of regulation than the current voluntary system and is therefore potentially a better means of protecting the public. The Society has argued for a long time that a statutory system is necessary to protect the public from charlatans and poor practice."

Statutory regulation, as it is implied here, is strong because it has the force of law pulsing through its veins. To be very clear, tho, this law may be local (pertaining to rules of the organisation itself) if the statutes are those of the organisation. Or it may be State Law, the law of the land, if the statutes are then written into the books of the Houses of Parliament.

What is happening currently, however, is State Regulation of psychological profession, and this is another thing again. State Regulation is imposed by the Government onto the professional organisation.

What protects the public from poorly functioning professionals, however, is not the enforcement of centralised rules (which is an excellent method of producing rule bound functionaries, and people too timid to use their own common sense). On the contrary, what is needed is strong networks of knowledge producing communities who maintain a clear emphasis on the realities of practice.

Here we have the two elements that make up Popper's nightmare. First, how can we make a system that supports the vibrant creation of practical knowledge, distributed as it is, in the minds of the may people that make up the community? Second, how does this relate to the FW Taylor's principle of efficiency, or to the legal notion of the nation state.

In the case of Statutory regulation, it can happen that a profession underwrites the structures of its organisation by getting them written into the Statute books of parliament, thus creating a powerful closed shop.

In the case of State regulation, it is the Government that imposes a system of regulation on a profession. This puts the professionals into a position of either having to pretend it was their idea in the first place, or risk themselves by opposing the law of the land. In 2001 suddenly the Labour Government decided this would be its course of action.

This means that in the current scenario relating to the so-called health professions, things are muddied precisely on this point.

The Government decided to impose State regulation on a whole range of professions. To do this, it first created two new bodies with the Health Professions Order 2001: The CHRE and the HPC. This followed the advice of the report of the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry. It was imagined that these bodies would be able to operate independently of Government and of professionals, and would take over the management of a whole range of practitioner bodies. Once in this position, the HPC would itself apply to the Government to turn the newly written 'statutes' into Statutory Law. In this way, the Government would avoid the accusation of imposing State Regulation on an unwilling body of practitioners. That is, the HPC would be able to claim that it was involved in a process of statutory regulation.

This, however, is stretching the truth exceeding thin.