Equality Bill

My Lords, contrary to some, I am not like WC Fields; I do not hate kids. However, the amendment reminds me of what happened when I introduced the infamous amendment that allowed light parental smacking. I won the support of all the violent Members of this House, who thought that I was a real man for doing it, and the opprobrium of all those who were part of the children’s rights movement. It was like that because we were debating whether it was right to allow a parent to smack a child lightly when they could not smack their husband or wife lightly, because it would be common assault. The reason why both Houses came to the conclusion that there should be a difference of treatment between children and adults was that, in some respects, children are not adults. While that debate was going on, my late lamented friend Earl Russell whispered to me the following wisdom. He said: "Why don’t you tell the House what John Locke, the great philosopher, said?". This was that children are not born equal; they are born to become equal. I believe this is true. The reason why one allows differences to occur is because children are not adults and one has therefore to allow differences in some contexts. I was a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and have had a continuing disagreement with them as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, may know, going right back to the earlier issue. I fully appreciate the argument and I am totally opposed to some of the kinds of discrimination to which he refers, but I do not think one can ignore the fact, when legislating, that there are contexts in which children are not the same as adults. They are entitled to equal treatment and not to be discriminated against unfairly, but there have to be a range of situations in which differences of treatment on the basis of age are allowed for children and young people.