You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Coline Covington has described the way in which the BCP Working Group on Confidentiality came about. I will mention some of our aims:
To explain our position to legislators so that we might bring some influence to bear on proposed legislation.
To explain our need for confidentiality to lawyers so that we might bring some influence to bear on court decisions.
To strengthen the position of colleagues by informing them on matters to do with confidentiality and by assisting them when they are under pressure to disclose confidential information; by offering fast and well-informed advice and by proposing a system by which this can be provided in future.
To strengthen our position by building a broad coalition to include other professional bodies; journalists, the clergy and lobby groups.
Coline has mentioned the dinner with Don Campbell and the advice that we received. Further advice was, that if we wanted to influence the Law, we needed to win a case to set a precedent. We were told that the higher the court in which the case were to be won and the better the arguments advanced, the greater would be the weight of the precedent that was set. Thus a cogently argued case won at appeal in the High Court or, even better, the House of Lords, would carry a great deal of weight.
Such a precedent was set in the USA by the landmark decision in the Jaffee v. Redmond case (1996),1 a decision in which the American Psychoanalytic Association, in coalition with a wide group of professional bodies, played an important part. This is the case of a policewoman who, when called to an incident, shot a member of the family who had phoned for help rather than the person who had intruded into their home. The policewoman, traumatized by the experience, went into psychotherapy. Almost two years