Report on the Manchester 'HPC Recall Meeting'

Department of Psychology
Manchester Metropolitan University Elizabeth Gaskell Campus
Hathersage Road Manchester M13 OJA UK

Tel 0161 247 2573 Fax 0161 247 6364 Email I.A.Parker@mmu.ac.uk

Ian Parker BA PhD AFBPsS CPsychol FRSA Professor of Psychology

5 October 2009 OPEN LETTER

Anna Van der Gaag
Chair, Health Professions Council, UK
Park House, 184 Kennington Park Road,
London, SE11 4BU

Dear Anna van der Gaag,

On Saturday 3rd October 2009 in Manchester the ‘HPC Recall Meeting’ took place and discussed where counsellors and psychotherapists are up to with the government plans to have them regulated by the Health Professions Council (HPC). The HPC now already includes professions that are not actually ‘Health Professions’, and many psychologists (who were brought into the HPC in July 2009) have made it clear that it is inappropriate to include them under that heading). This 3rd October recall meeting was organised after the failure of the HPC itself to follow up a ‘stakeholder’ consultation meeting it held in Manchester in March earlier in the year. At this stakeholder meeting, probably to the surprise of the HPC, there was a good deal of opposition to their idea of what regulation is and the work so far of their ‘Professional Liaison Group’ (PLG). There was no report and discussion of the issues raised at the stakeholder meeting at the following PLG, and the HPC has not either organised any further open consultative meetings or engaged with the questions raised in March. HPC staff and PLG members were invited to the Recall meeting but declined to attend, adding insult to injury by suggesting that it would be possible to meet privately after the current consultation period is over.

At our meeting we noted the absence of the HPC and the PLG, and then reviewed progress, or lack of it, so far. We noted that the division between counselling and psychotherapy is quite artificial, and that there is an impossible paradox at work when we expect counsellors not to engage in (what the PLG recently termed) ‘mental disorder’ (as many counsellors working for MIND have to do, for example) or psychotherapists not to be concerned in their practice with ‘mental health and well-being’. This paradox highlights the absurdity of the attempt to press those in different modalities to conform to standard covering definitions of ‘counselling’ and ‘psychotherapy’. There is, of course, a deeper problem at work in the pressing of all involved into standardised models and procedures (those favoured, it is clear, by those leading this process in the PLG). There is a particular threat to ‘patients’ (clients, service users) in that the HPC regulation will give an illusion of security in which those who have been obedient and conform to the HPC register will then have even more licence to abuse their power, and this regulative process will close down one of the few spaces in culture in which people can attempt to speak freely and reflect on what they have said.

We noted that high-profile cases in disciplinary procedures will still actually be able to practice, and that ‘protection’ of the public would be better served by recourse to the law (and resources that are being put into the HPC be put instead into good legal advice and support for those who are often, for good reason, shy of approaching lawyers for help). HPC regulation will also lead to defensive practice by counsellors and psychotherapists anxious that they are going beyond the remit of work defined by their place on the register, refusing to take on ‘difficult’ clients perhaps, and so access to counselling and psychotherapy will actually be severely reduced. We noted that there is no place for mediation in disputes (until after a hearing is over), and that the HPC PLG has chosen to ignore a large body of evidence on this kind of process as an alternative approach. We spent some time discussing threats to practice, but it should be clear so far that the meeting also explored practical alternatives.

We appreciate that the HPC has a difficult if not impossible task, and now would be the time, already late but not too late, to conclude that they are not the organisation to undertake regulation of counselling and psychotherapy, and to tell the government this. In the meantime it was clear at the 3rd October Recall meeting that many counsellors and psychotherapists will refuse to join the HPC register – not because they are against regulation as such but against this state regulation – and Principled Non-Compliance is an option some of us can pursue to defend our practice against the HPC process which threatens to destroy it.

Yours sincerely



Ian Parker
Manchester Alliance (Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy against State Regulation: www.allianceforcandp.org