My Lords, we had an extensive debate on our amendment in this form in Committee. We have brought it back on Report because we are determined to make progress on criminalising the fraudulent behaviour of the charlatan psychotherapists and counsellors this amendment is directed at. I believe we have made some progress since Committee and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, from the Department of Health and Social Care for their time, attention and sympathetic response at the meeting they arranged for a number of us who support this amendment.
I certainly think the meeting increased government understanding of the truly shocking wrongs these charlatans perpetrate towards the young people they prey on, the prevalence of this behaviour and the perniciousness of its effects—with the lives of many young and vulnerable people ruined, often permanently. Our debate and the meeting also reminded the Government of a long history of attempts to secure legislation curbing this behaviour and of the strength of feeling and determination of those who strive for change on this issue —an issue which is certainly not going to go away.
As we discussed in Committee, these totally unqualified charlatans ply their trade by offering what they call counselling or psychotherapy services, mostly to young adults, to whom they often charge very substantial fees. They then build up in their patients or clients—in reality, their victims—a misplaced trust in them and engineer a false dependence by a process of transference. This exploitation is often assisted by the perpetrators implanting entirely false memories in their victims of imagined but illusory abuse during their childhood, usually by their parents.
The process is aimed at alienating these young people from their parents and other family members—often permanently—inflicting profound and long-lasting
psychological damage upon them. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, with all her extensive experience, tellingly described this unscrupulous exploitation of vulnerability, which is what this amendment aims to stop.
My understanding is that the Government maintain their position that the new offence we advocate should not be part of the Bill because, they say, there is a concern to confine the Bill to the domestic context, and these so-called counsellors and psychotherapists provide their services outside their victims’ homes. I disagree with that position for two reasons. The first is that this abuse is in fact domestic abuse, because its perpetrators, although not operating from within their victims’ family homes, are usurping the position of their victims’ parents and family members. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, put it in Committee,
“the self-styled development coach preys on their vulnerable clients and tears them away from their families, to the extent that they break off all contact and become estranged. There are countless such cases. The goal of such therapy is coercion and control, to debilitate and disable—abuse, if ever there was.”—[Official Report, 8/2/21; col. 23.]
Secondly, I do not believe we should be too precious about the ambit of a particular piece of legislation, including this Bill. The Domestic Abuse Bill before us amends other legislation in a large number of its provisions. Our amendment would add a new clause modelled on Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. Other amendments have been made to that Act in this Bill, notably the non-fatal strangulation offence incorporated in the Bill this afternoon, which inserts a clause of general application after Section 75—a clause which is not restricted to domestic abuse.
I suggest that if new legislation is necessary and within scope of the Bill—as the Public Bill Office decided our amendment was when it accepted it—we should legislate. The way to legislate on this issue is by adapting Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act, as we advocate.
It is high time for legislation. In Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, explained the history of his involvement with seeking legislation on this issue when he was Solicitor-General. He raised the question of why, if they can legislate to outlaw this behaviour in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, we cannot legislate here. We have received no answer to that question.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, also made the point that we have been trying fruitlessly to make progress for more than 20 years. The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, pointed out that this type of alienation is nothing new; domestic alienation has been happening for 50 years, with the quasi-healers operating with immunity. So have the other forms of domestic abuse we are tackling in this Bill—but we are now trying to tackle them. The Bill involves an enlightened process on which we are embarked, but we should take care that in seeking enlightened progress, we do not make it exclusive.
Both before and since the debate in Committee, I have received a number of letters—some long, all well argued, clearly emotional and universally tragic—from parents and other family members who have, through no fault of their own, lost the relationships they once enjoyed with children and relatives, leaving them
heartbroken and bereft, on the basis of falsehoods peddled by exploitative quacks. My noble friend Lady Jolly pointed out the degree to which this so-called therapy is entirely unregulated, and she powerfully demonstrated how relevant that was.
At our meeting, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, raised the possibility of regulating psychotherapists by statutory instrument, and that is something we would be keen to follow up. However, it will certainly continue to be insufficient, as it has been to date, to rely on voluntary registration with the Professional Standards Authority, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, in Committee.
Strong and effective regulation will help and should be introduced, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Alderdice in his Private Member’s Bill as long ago as 2001. However, the thrust of our amendment is to criminalise this predatory abuse, and we need legislation to do that on the statute book. The Government seem to sympathise with that aim and the direction of our amendment, their unhappiness being at the prospect of including it in this Bill. But the one thing I have not heard from the Government is any suggestion that a coercive control offence modelled on Section 76, as this amendment is, is not a suitable way to achieve our aim. We therefore encourage the Government, even at this late stage, to accept this amendment or commit to legislation in this area.
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If our amendment is not accepted, we will be back. If the Government cannot accept it now, will they please say what they propose? If not now, when? This cannot wait much longer. Victims and their families continue to suffer. They all need and deserve statutory protection. I beg to move.