Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the other speakers have established that there is a very real mischief here. My concern is about the width of this amendment. If it is going to be brought back on Report, either by the Minister or by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, it really needs to be more specific. It is very broad in the concepts it uses, such as the concept of “psychological harm” and whether

“the behaviour was in all the circumstances reasonable”.

It seems to me that the mischief here is people who provide psychotherapy or counselling services in bad faith or dishonestly, and we need to have an amendment which more specifically addresses that mischief. The French legislation to which the noble Lord, Lord Marks, referred was much more specific and tailored than what we have here.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this amendment, but the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, have inspired me to speak. I support the amendment and would add another set of people who do exactly the same: spiritual faith healers. They do coercive and controlling behaviour and target the most vulnerable. They do all the things mentioned. In certain minority ethnic communities, they will target vulnerable women, for example, and take large amounts of cash from them. I do not expect noble Lords to amend this proposed new clause to add those sets of people, because they obviously want to maximise their chances of getting their clause through, but they have inspired me to think about replicating their amendment and perhaps proposing it for future legislation. So the Minister can expect a letter from me to discuss this further—which also amounts to spiritual abuse.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier for tabling this considered amendment. Controlling or coercive behaviour is currently legislated against if the offender is or has been

“in an intimate or family relationship”

with the victim. This amendment uses the framework of Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 and applies it to offenders providing psychotherapeutic or counselling services.

I understand the reasoning behind the noble Lord’s amendment. The original offence is in place because being in an intimate or familial relationship puts both parties in a unique position of proximity. These positions of trust carry a heightened risk of becoming exploitative, and thus legislation exists to recognize this. Psychotherapy and counselling services carry a similar risk; they put patients in extremely open and often vulnerable positions as they entrust the provider with their confidence. Controlling or coercive behaviour becomes more likely given the power dynamics in these relationships and I see no reason why, in principle, the law should not extend past protecting familial or intimate relationships to encompass certain intimate services.

This conclusion is backed up by recent research into mental health services. Earlier this year, the University of Hertfordshire found more than 750 incidents of violence and coercion by staff. These include instances of verbal abuse, intentional neglect and even cases of physical violence. I do not intend to extrapolate from that study and make it seem as if it represents the entirety of our mental health services—I hope it does not. This is an under-investigated area and we do not yet know the scale of neglect in our services, but the most serious conclusion that can be drawn from it is the fact that, of these 750 offences, only four official complaints were made and, of those four complaints, a single one was upheld. Whether the reason for that was ignorance of reporting mechanisms, intimidation by staff or the inexistence of the legal means, it represents a failure of the system.

The least we should do as legislators is promise to further examine the reasons behind those failings: something I hope the Minister can assure us the Government will do. If the Government conclude there is a gap in the law, and that vulnerable people attending psychotherapy or counselling services are being controlled or coerced without the legal means to get justice, I hope that they will consider the amendment in question.