Children, Schools and Families Bill

The fact that the Human Rights Act was not passed until 1998 would not have prevented somebody from making a judgment based on the European convention on human rights in a case of the sort that I shall describe, because such a case could have gone to the Strasbourg Court. The fact that the Education Act was passed in 1996 not in 1998 does not matter that much, as the ECHR is the essence of the 1998 Act and the rule of incompatibility means that our legislation can be overridden. This debate goes back to a very important case in the Isle of Man that involved the use of the birch. I am not in favour of that by any means, as I regard the birch as completely unacceptable. What I seek is to determine is whether there is any kind of reasonable physical punishment that falls short of what we would all regard as unacceptable, or whether there is an absolute and total bar on any form of punishment that is physical, as opposed to one that revolves around the writing of lines, exclusion and so on. I am asking these questions more to invite discussion than to seek a decision. The Singleton review has been referred to, and I hope that it will throw more light on the matter. However, we are in Committee and we have a responsibility to consider—