The Department of Health and Social Care has launched a UK-wide consultation into the regulation of healthcare professions.
It comes as the government is seeking extra legislative powers, as part of the Health and Care bill, to make sure the regulation of health and social care professionals is proportionate and best protects the public from harm.
The new consultation looks at how powers to introduce and remove professions from regulation could be used in the future.
The consultation asks for views on:
- The criteria used to decide whether a profession should be regulated
- whether there are regulated professions that no longer need statutory regulation
- whether there are unregulated professions that do need statutory regulation
While the consultation is much broader than counselling and psychotherapy, it could impact how decisions are made about whether the professions are regulated in the future.
The government has said it currently doesn’t have any plans to bring any extra professions into statutory regulation, apart from physician associates and anaesthesia associates.
Government health minister Edward Argar confirmed there were “no current plans to regulate psychotherapists, counsellors or other therapist roles” in Parliament this week in response to a question from Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle.
We’ll be responding to the consultation and will publish our full response on our website.
You can submit your own response to the consultation too through the Government website.
The consultation closes at 11.45pm on 31 March 2022.
Read more about the healthcare regulation consultation and find out how to submit a response.