Queen’s Speech

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot compete with the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, a former president of the Methodist Conference, in his tribute to the right reverend Prelate. I will just add this: when my forebears were respectively the Dean and Bishop of Winchester, a little up the road from Portsmouth, they wore gaiters and were very old. I am now looking at a right reverend Prelate who is retiring from here and yet he is younger than I am; I find this extremely confusing.

I also congratulate the two maiden speakers: the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, and the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev. Both gave truly excellent speeches, and the noble Lord gave what, to me, was a delightfully surprising speech. I had never heard him speak before and I was fascinated by what he had to say. I hope we will hear from both of them frequently in the future.

Time does not permit me to run through all that is in the gracious Speech, but there is much in it that your Lordships’ House can welcome. However, there is a good deal of legislation that we will need look at with care, not least the Government’s intentions with regard to judicial review.

Despite the intentions behind the Queen’s Speech, there is something missing from it. It is a matter that has been mentioned quite recently in this House: we need legislation to control and outlaw the predatory and immoral activities of quack counsellors or psychotherapists. There is, on the evidence laid before your Lordships several times already, a pressing need to criminalise controlling or coercive behaviour by persons providing psychotherapy or counselling services to vulnerable adults.

We protect children; we protect those with an intellectual incapacity or those suffering from mental illness; and we protect those suffering from the infirmities of old age. But we do not protect those over the age of 18 who, although ostensibly of an age to make up their own minds about how to live their lives and outside any definition of incapacity, are exploitable by charlatans offering them a service they are not qualified to provide and often for a large fee.

In the last Session, the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, Lord Alderdice and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, who I see in her place, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Mallalieu and Lady Finlay, all raised the issue—first, in a debate in early 2020, initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, and then again in debates on the Domestic Abuse Bill earlier this year. My noble friend Lord Astor of Hever also played an invaluable role. The majority of contributors to those debates wanted either proper registration of these informal therapists or, in my case, a criminal offence similar to those enforced in Belgium, France and Luxembourg, to deter these charlatans.

Although there was support in principle from the Government, we were told by my noble friends on the Front Bench that progress on this entirely laudable and worthwhile project was hampered by two things. Either we were asking for change at not quite the right time or we had not quite found the right Bill to amend the law. In Committee on the Domestic Abuse Bill two months ago, I explained why the provision encompassing how we proposed to deal with quack counsellors would work, theoretically and practically, as an addition to the criminal law. Although not an exact replica, it was similar to laws in force in Belgium, France and Luxembourg, countries that adhered to the European Convention on Human Rights. Nothing that we are proposing would adversely affect citizens’ rights to free assembly, religious freedom, freedom of expression or private life. However, it would affect these rogues’ ability to predate on emotionally vulnerable young adults for malign purposes—to take their money and break up their families, and even to brainwash them. It would prohibit them pretending to be something that they are not—academically and practically qualified psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists.

The Government, using the “wrong Bill” argument, made two points against the amendment in Committee. It was said that a new offence would alter the “dynamic” of a Bill specifically about domestic abuse and would upset the Bill’s “architecture”. It was also said that there were other remedies more suited to dealing with these issues, such as registration or accreditation by existing and respected professional bodies. No doubt requiring psychotherapists to be professionally qualified and accredited members of a professional body would enable well-motivated counsellors to gain standing and proper recognition, but to reinforce the value of membership of those professional bodies and accreditation by the law would make it a criminal offence for someone not qualified, registered and accredited to hold themselves up as being so. I refer, for example, to the Medical Act 1983 and the Solicitors Act 1974.

It was accepted in the last Session that we have been slow to appreciate the scale of coercive behaviour. The Government acknowledged that most noble Lords who supported our amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill had pointed to evidence and, indeed, to specific cases that fraudulent psychotherapists and counsellors were taking advantage of their position to supplant friends and families in the minds and affections of their clients, using ill-gotten ways to turn them against friends and families. The law is deficient; there is a lacuna, but it can be filled, and we can possibly get hold of a provision in the professional qualifications Bill referred to earlier. I urge the Government to get on with it.