ABSTRACT
This book is quite particular and rather unusual. Most of it is a transcript of the fitness to practise case of a psychologist and HPC Council Member, Dr Malcolm Cross. I have chosen to present this transcription (made available under the law that created the Health Professions Council, henceforth the HPC) in order to allow people to grasp the reality of the new regulatory framework that now exists in this country. Very few people, even amongst those directly affected, seem to know what the framework is based on, nor how it arose. Much of the problem is that the new regulation is based on quite different assumptions from those we are accustomed to, and it is the arbitrary change in these underlying assumptions that make it difficult to grasp what’s going on. During the course of my research into this problem, Dr Cross’s fitness to practise case came forward. It occurred to me that the transcription of this case would provide the perfect material to reveal the nature of what is actually going on. The case itself reads rather like a soap opera, and has a curiously compelling character. It is quite fun to read. However, this is not the level at which the real information exists. The case is presented in order to show the mechanisms and procedures that are put into play in the name of “public protection”. Dr Cross himself is not the primary concern of this book, but 2a useful and unavoidable vehicle for it. I have topped and tailed the transcript with an introduction and conclusion. In Chapter One, I have brought together some threads that make up the backdrop to the case, and which help to make sense of what has happened. The concluding chapter also includes other information arising from my wider research into the HPC, which helps to show how the single case presented here is part of a wider pattern of chaos. I hope that it helps to frame the material and to prompt more people to act.
