News of the fighting fund for the campaign against the HPC

text of blurb to raise money, from the organisers:

THE FIGHTING FUND FOR THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE HPC


As you may know, a number of organisations in our field have sought legal advice from the law firm Bindmans regarding the HPC juggernaut. HPC continue to ignore rational argument and refuse to recognise their unsuitability as regulator for our field. In a crucial meeting today, they made the decision to ignore the many critiques they have received and to advise Government that they should regulate the talking therapies.

It is now time to fight back at a legal level via the administrative court procedure known as Judicial Review (JR). If successful, a JR would force the HPC and also the Government to go back to the drawing board regarding statutory regulation. They would have to undertake the serious research and consultation that they have failed to carry out. Of course, it could still lead back to HPC - but many individuals and organisations think it is an option worth pursuing.

The snag, as ever, is money. In an ideal world, we would need to have between £100,000 and £200,000 in hand to be safe. This sounds impossible until we remember that a lot of relatively small donations could raise a very large sum. If 2,000 people each gave £50, we would have £100,000. If the sum was £100, we would have £200,000. Donations could be made in instalments - four monthly payments of £25 would work. By way of comparison, over 2000 people voted for Andrew Samuels in the UKCP election.

There is a great deal of fundraising starting today, not only in our groups but across the whole network of counselling and therapy organisations. We need to get the first stage of JR going within the next ten days, following the HPC meeting today. It is a step by step process, so we will be able to consider our options at the different stages of the review process. But we need to ask everyone to start sending the money now!

You can use the information below to pay in instalments but maybe we should say that the end of April is the cut off for instalment payments. If people gave four instalments of £25 in January, February, March and April, that would be great. But we'll have to rely on you to remember to send the other instalments. We are thinking of £100 as a target figure but we realise some will give more and some less and all of it is very welcome.

AS (personal capacity) writes: in 37 years in the profession, I have never seen anything like this. With the money, we can continue to instruct Bindmans, who are a leading firm of constitutional lawyers, and they have instructed one of the country's top QC barristers specialising in administrative law. She was very impressive when we met her the other day. She has agreed to work for greatly reduced fees, as have Bindmans, and neither of them is in need of our money so they will definitely not let us do anything rash. If the fundraising goes well, we will use some of the money for the campaign, placing info in national newspapers as a way of combating the spin from HPC. A fundraising committee made up of individuals from different organisations will make sure that the fund is properly administered and the money used responsibly.

Transfer is the best method of payment. Please send to:

JR Fighting Fund, Lloyds Bank
Sort Code 30-00-04, Account 02101964,
or send cheques made out to:
‘JR Fighting Fund’
to Pine Cottage, Thornden Wood Road,
Herne Bay, Kent CT6 7NZ.


With best wishes

Andrew Samuels (personal capacity) and Darian Leader