Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of (a) psychotherapy and (b) counselling professionals operating without a protected title on patients.

Psychotherapists and counsellors are not statutorily regulated. Where a health profession is regulated by law, this normally allows for a professional’s title to be protected in law, making it a criminal offence for someone to practise or use a protected title without being registered with the relevant regulator. The Government has no current plans to extend statutory regulation to psychotherapists and or counsellors.