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Lord Alderdice, the Liberal Democrat Peer and Speaker to the Northern Irish Assembly, met with Ann Casement, Chair of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, in February 1999 at the House of Lords and offered to bring a Private Member's Bill to regulate the profession of psychotherapy. They subsequently met with the then Minister for Health in the Lords, Baroness Hayman, and Anne Richardson, Senior Policy Adviser to the Department of Health. At this meeting, Lord Alderdice presented the case for taking the regulation of psychotherapists through a Private Member's Bill route because many psychotherapists do not work in the NHS. The draft psychotherapy Bill is being put forward to regulate the private sector as there are a range of ways in which the public are protected in the public sector. For this reason, he feels that the two possible routes open to regulation under the Health Act are not suitable for psychotherapy. One of these routes would be under Schedule 3 of the Act, which allows for new professions to become regulated, and the other is the new regulation for the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine (CPSM) to be renamed the Health Professions Council, which regulates professions primarily working in the NHS e.g. physiotherapists and radiographers.
Lord Alderdice called a meeting on the 22 October 1999 at the House of Lords of eight of the professional bodies in the psychotherapy field to discuss his proposed draft Psychotherapy Bill. The content of the Bill states that there be put in place a General Psychotherapy Council with an elected Chair. This General Council would be made up of members of the psychotherapy profession but at least half its membership would consist of lay members such as Privy Councillors. There would also be a Registrar to establish and maintain a central Register of psychotherapists.
The Bill would also put in place an Education Committee which would have the duty of promoting high standards of training in psychotherapy. Further,