Psychotherapy and Counselling

Mr. Paterson
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many qualified non-medical psychotherapy and counselling practitioners were employed by the NHS in each of the last five years.

Ms Rosie Winterton
The table shows the number of qualified psychotherapy staff in the national health service in England from 2001 to 2005. The workforce census does not separately identify the number of counselling practitioners.

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|England                                                                              |Headcount|
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|2001                                                                                 |745      |
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|2002                                                                                 |867      |
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|2003                                                                                 |948      |
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|2004                                                                                 |1,101    |
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|2005                                                                                 |1,087    |
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|Source:The Information Centre for health and social care non-medical workforce census|         |
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Mr. Paterson
To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on the regulation of non-medical psychotherapy and counselling practitioners.

Ms Rosie Winterton
Work is in hand to scope competences and undertake preparatory work to enable the statutory regulation of psychotherapists.

Decisions about further progress will be made after consideration of responses received to the recent public consultation on healthcare professional regulation, which closed on 10 November 2006.