The meaning given in the psy field to the term statutory regulation varies according to both what the speaker/writer intends and the listener/reader does or doesn’t want to hear. Given there are five different meanings in circulation perhaps the following will clarify why there are so many crossed lines and help the Alliance grasp what is at stake.

1. ORIGINAL UKCP MEANING
Often also spoken of as statutory registration this where statutory powers are given to a profession by Government to regulate themselves. Examples of this are the doctors who are governed by statutory powers vested in the General Medical Council, a regulatory body in the hands of the profession itself, with the British Medical Association as the professional society that it governs; and the solicitors governed by statutory powers vested in the Law Society with its associated Solicitors Regulatory Authority. The analogies here were clarified in professor Darian Leader’s e-mail of Dec 8, after obtaining the response of Jacques China, “ex-lawyer turned psy”. This was the goal of the failed Alderdice Bill of 2001 and also the goal of the 2007 panic button assembly of the UKCP, BCP, BACP and BPS known as the Psychological Professions Council (=Permission Please to Control). This was again dismissed by the government and died abruptly when the most powerful bloc, the BPS, under undisclosed duress and/or seeking economic advantage decided to go under the HPC hammer. The ghost of Alderdice also briefly reappeared as the Psychological Professions Action Group. This meaning of statutory regulation is authentic, it corresponds with a reality but not one the psy field umbrella organisations will ever be privileged to administer. This statutory regulation is not State Regulation.

2. ALLIANCE WISH LIST MEANING(S)
“Enhanced voluntary regulation” belongs here.The components of this meaning are diverse and putative. As yet there is no evident UK governmental consideration for a variety of regulatory options based on existing exemplars in other parts of the world (Australia, Vermont, Colorado, Montana, Washington (?)) which have achieved statutory status without being State Regulation. Some or all of the following are involved: the State (because only the State could provide the longterm administrative resources necessary) maintains a central database of self and peer authenticated practitioner listings in conjunction with a public record of case- proven outcomes to independent disciplinary processes that have resulted in an unfit to practice conclusion and likewise records judgements under common or statutory law implying the same, thereby providing information for the protection of the public and a trigger for legal action in the event of a therapist continuing to practise regardless. IPN’s Practitioner Full Disclosure List currently under development is a prototype for this. Existing laws (common or statute) already cover or could be extended to cover the rare cases of severe abuse of trust (e.g.false pretences, criminal injury, sexual abuse) while ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution), also known as mediation,becomes the preferred option for all less serious complaints, at least in the first place. The crucial distinction from meaning 1) is that no hegemonic power to set training standards over the psy field is bestowed on any professional body. This meaning of statutory regulation is also authentic i.e. it is not State Regulation in disguise.

The negative reading of this wish list is that it evidences a desire for sanitisation and/or officialisation by the State through a backdoor route. The positive reading is that it entails a recognition at statutory level that the psy field is best left to its own devices without an imposition such as HPC. However unless the State were to close the matter through a statutory arrangement explicitly privileging a flat field the chances are that the authoritarians and centralists within the psy field would make further attempts to resurrect knackered hierarchical arrangements in order to gain control of larger sections of the total psy field, the same old umbrella organisation project.

3. GRASSROOTS MEANING
Here statutory refers to the already published codes or ‘statutes’ of professional organisations or groupings, with a further possible implication that these could somehow be given a conventional statutory legitimation. Darian Leader appears to have been arguing strongly for this reading of statutory. Were this to happen 3) would be veering back towards 1). Again this is an authentic meaning. It is also a from the bottom up model and therefore possibly IPN and Lacanian compatible and perhaps compatible with meaning 2). But in the current context of the predominant meanings 1), 4) and 5) it is rather esoteric and prone to engender confusion. While there is the presence of The Name of the Father (setting limits) in this reading of statutory there is no suggestion that the State is needed to create any new policing bodies to reinforce this function. Therefore this is not State Regulation. Julia Evans has provided a framework for identifying different kinds of Practitionership according to which of 3 kinds of knowledge is deployed, Savoir y faire, denoting a taking of full responsibility for all aspects of one’s work as a self-authorising agent in a relationship with peers, is a further Elaboration of 3)

4. COLLABORATIONNISTE/COLLABORATOR MEANING
Here the Alliance defines itself as the necessary focus of resistance, whereas the UKCP, BPC, BACP, BABCP and BPS accede to the government’s drive to regulate the psy field via HPC and fall in with its terminology of statutory regulation, becoming agents of mystification and state control. Actually the Government is the unspoken arms length sixth source of meaning, filling out the term statutory regulation with the leverage of real power exerted over people by the State. While all State Regulation is statutory not all that is statutory is State Regulation. For the fourth set of meaning makers statutory is spun as status for the reassurance of the practitioner mass in the implausible professions of counselling and psychotherapy; and in so doing the elements of dictation are backgrounded if not altogether concealed. The historical resonance of 1) is brought into play, subtly offsetting and underpinning the current shabby accommodation, neutralising potential perception that this is really State Regulation. Thus this fourth meaning of statutory regulation is bogus, because however possible it is to claim the term is technically accurate (see 5) ) the dynamic is driven by the State. Were it not for the government’s decision to install the HPC as implementer, the HPC would have no authority to extend its regimen to cover the psy field. The PPC episode revealed the ambivalence of the umbrellas and how readily they collapsed into collusion with the government’s decision as if it were their own.

HPC MEANING
On three counts the HPC can claim it is offering statutory regulation. Firstly the HPC can imply by virtue of its own statutory constitution by order of the Privy Council (HPO2001) its regulatory targets are thereby statutory. Secondly the HPC (unlike Skills For Health whose operations are paid for by the Department of Health) is self-funded from registrants fees and can therefore claim it is independent of the government, not to mention its professed independence from Skills For Health. A further twist in the HPC’s Houdini is the recent assignment of the term state regulator to the HPC’s now defunct predecessor, the CPSM, by its PR-minded Chief Executive. Thirdly there is a statutory process involving a parliamentary sub-committee through which HPC regulation will be legitimised, sealed and finalised. But note this is not a put to the vote after open debate of a new law by both houses of parliament as it was with the not to be enacted Alderdice Bill introduced through the House of Lords in 2001. What is not publicised by HPC are its dynamic articulations with government. Firstly it was directed to regulate the psy field by the Department of Health (later the HPC “recommended” the psychological therapists be regulated as if the idea arose from its own deliberations, though apparently it was short of work at the time), making the psy professions the first to be coerced into State Regulation under its auspices; as opposed to all previous professions approaching it as supplicant asking to be regulated! Secondly it is Department of Health lawyers who will package the regulatory deal yet to be agreed (the State is clearly involved here in the creation of an arrangement designed to be in perpetuity). Thirdly and most crucially for the distinction between statutory and State Regulation there is the matter of to whom the HPC is accountable. Now the HPC would swerve this question in terms of how it is being raised here and would perhaps declare that it is itself regulated by the Council for Health Regulatory Excellence, a fact already uncovered by Janet Low’s research. Jacques China has provided the more immediately relevant answer:

“ State regulation refers to an agency of government set up to regulate one or more professions. Such agencies, which are not professional bodies, are answerable ultimately to the state, often via some other intermediate agency and not to the professions concerned. E.g. HPC.”

The missing link, the intermediate agency, is the shadowy CHRE. This leads to a fourth and necessarily at present vaguer point regarding the planned and progressive nature of State Regulation. Looking into the annexation and enclosure by the state of the psy field, more dark stars appear over the horizon. Heard of the National Institute for Mental Health in England? First warnings of its approach have only recently been received. Who in the psy field had heard of the HPC a few years ago? The HPC is likely to be a portal to further levels of State Regulation. Fifthly the “consultative process” that is now underway at the HPC with the carefully screened to be trouble free group, the PLG, is essentially coercive, ordered to follow a plan to produce a predetermined outcome. Thus the fifth meaning of statutory regulation, which through the PLG dovetails with the fourth, is also bogus, and should also be more truthfully named as State Regulation. Tell like it is.

eIpnosis is edited, maintained and © Denis Postle 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008