The days when the professions enjoyed automatic respect from the public are long gone. Attacks on the integrity and competence of professions come from all sides. Scandals like the Shipman murders and the Bristol Royal Infirmary’s failure to respond to abnormally high death rates amongst babies have led to claims of systemic failure. Teachers are widely depicted as stressed out, burned out or incompetent. And the Kentish rebel in Shakespeare’s Henry VI who shouts ‘the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’ is guaranteed to bring the house down.

If we no longer believe that professionals are above petty vanity, greed and self-interest, this raises obvious questions about their ability to regulate their own behaviour and maintain professional standards. In the name of creating more trust and accountability, the government is taking an increasing interest in professional training, licensing and assessment. But does this threaten the integrity and independence of the professions? Is such interference a case of control freakery, or are politicians responding to a crisis of confidence in the professions, as evidenced by their own eagerness to involve non-experts in decision making, from ‘personalised learning’ to deference to‘expert patients’? Who should decide what counts as ethically correct behaviour, and to whom can professionals be held accountable if not their peers, who have the benefit of specialist training and expert knowledge? Is the public suspicious of doctors, lawyers and teachers as people, or have we lost faith in expertise itself? Can professionals themselves use their status, expertise and authority to win respect from a sceptical public and from politicians?