Children, Schools and Families Bill

The Secretary of State is adopting the role of Confused.com and trying to arbitrate in the matter. The question boils down to this: the European convention on human rights and the United Nations convention on the rights of the child both contain, in effect, an evolving prohibition on any kind of physical punishment at all. That is the bottom line. I think I am right in saying that the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) would agree with that. That is what she would want. There are those who believe that in a school it is necessary sometimes, in certain circumstances, for some degree of physical punishment to be available but not necessarily used, and perhaps then only as a last resort—I would say definitely as a last resort—to enable the balance of discipline within that school to be maintained. Certain children are so unruly and so violent in their behaviour towards the teachers and others in the classroom that some form of physical punishment may be necessary. I appreciate that this is a very difficult subject. It will be carefully observed that I am not making a categorical statement, because I have great sympathy with those who would want to keep punishment under severe control, but I pose the question. I hope that when the Bill gets to the House of Lords, if it ever does, it will be considered against the background of the Singleton letter plus the review, and in the light of the sort of considerations that I have raised. The situation is nothing like as black and white as the Secretary of State or, if I may say so, the hon. Members for Keighley and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole may have thought. There are important questions of balance to be resolved in the interests of the child. Some children need boundaries. That is part of the problem. If they have boundaries, they know where they are. It is interesting to note that one of the most distinguished judges who has adjudicated on these questions—I think it was Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice—explained with great candour, from his own experience in a court case, why he believed that it was important to strike the balance properly: that there is not an absolute, that children are different, and that some children need different boundaries. Those of us who abhor the idea of inhumane or degrading treatment in the common-sense understanding of that expression might also take the view that there is a balance to be struck.