Mental Health: Unregulated Treatment

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for securing this debate and I assure the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that we will be unanimous in this discussion. What the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, has done is to illustrate the problems and dangers of a sector that is not properly regulated, and it goes from one extreme to another.

One extreme was outlined in the letter that we all received about unregulated abuse, coercive control and cultic abuse. It makes the point outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about recognition of coercive control covering domestic matters only and failing to recognise the harm that can be done by the sorts of organisations that were graphically described to us by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Therefore, the law is inadequate in this regard and needs to be addressed. The Minister must realise that the whole House is unanimous in thinking that that needs to happen. He needs to know that, when the first Bill comes along in which we can bring forward that amendment, we probably will. The Government would be wise to do it themselves, because they will lose otherwise, because the House is united in this.

The other extreme is the regulatory framework, with which all noble Lords are familiar. It is significant that the Professional Standards Authority felt it needed to draw attention to the inadequacies in this direction, in the letter that we received from Christine Braithwaite, the director of standards. She says:

“for a number of years we have requested changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 to include Accredited Registers to better strengthen the protection they are able to provide. To date, no amendments have been made.”

If the body that registers the different counselling and psychoanalytic organisations is saying that this is inadequate, as well as saying that the regulatory framework is inadequate, the Government really need to sit up and listen to what is being said right across the piece.

It is a matter for the Government to regulate this profession. Statutory regulation will offer great protection to the public. The Government also need to look at the titles of counsellors and psychotherapists to make sure that they are recognised as such and are being protected under statutory regulation. I look forward to what the Minister has to say.