Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will bring forward legislative proposals to protect the titles for all (a) psychologists, (b) psychotherapists, (c) counsellors and (d) other psychological therapy providers.

All professional healthcare regulators have protected titles, relating to the professions they regulate. There are currently 64 protected titles across 10 professional health and care regulators, including nine protected titles relating to the practitioner psychologist profession, regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council.

Titles can only be protected for statutorily regulated professions. There are no plans to statutorily regulate psychologist, psychotherapist, counsellor, or other psychological therapy provider roles.

The Government keeps the professions subject to statutory regulation under review and in 2022 published the consultation, Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate, seeking views on the criteria used to decide when regulation is necessary, and whether there are any unregulated professions that should be brought into statutory regulation. The Government will publish its response to the consultation in due course.