Lord Garnier
Main Page: Lord Garnier (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for introducing this debate. At its heart, this debate is about preventing the exploitation of the vulnerable—not of the mentally ill, the elderly or children, who are protected quite widely by the law already, but of those whose vulnerability, be it emotional or psychological, permits them to be preyed on by charlatan counsellors. These charlatans suborn them through their cynical promises of peace of mind and future happiness; through lies about their families and bogus therapy they suborn them into breaking off contact with them. Frequently, since they target people with money, they charge exorbitant fees for doing so. They are purveyors of deceit, misery and distress. They need to be stopped.
I first came across this form of quackery in the late 1970s, when I was acting for the Daily Mail against a cult called the “Moonies”, who broke up families wholesale and brainwashed children. Most of them were adult children in a vulnerable and emotional state, lonely and far away from home. I was reminded of them in about 2013 or 2014 when I came across the case of a young woman who had been suborned into leaving her family, cutting herself off and paying this extraordinary woman vast sums of money for her quackery. Supported by David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, Sir Oliver Letwin, then the Government’s policy chief, and Mr Tom Sackville, a former Home Office Minister, I attempted to amend the law to prevent these quacks operating and exploiting their victims. Although we tried, we could not find an opportunity to amend the law and achieve our aim.
However, it can and has been done. It has been done in France, Luxembourg and Belgium. They have passed laws to amend the criminal law which have withstood challenges in the Strasbourg court under the European Convention on Human Rights. With care, provision can be made to protect freedom of religion, assembly and association so that, for example, adult children can if they want to, even if their parents object, join closed religious orders, give their money away or just cut themselves off from their families. But quacks should not be permitted any longer to exploit emotionally vulnerable adults.
This cruel practice must stop. We should ensure that it does. I suspect that we give more protection to cats and dogs against quack vets than to emotionally and psychologically vulnerable adults against quack counsellors. It is time we did better.