Children, Schools and Families Bill

I have been really indulgent. If I could just set out the current position, I shall absolutely take an intervention. As I understand it, there are two different forces at work here. The hon. Member for Stone wondered whether we should extend the in loco parentis option for using force into full-time maintained schools, and argued that there may be—he did not say this absolutely—circumstances when a teacher should have the right to use the reasonable punishment defence to strike a child. That means that he wants to move from the grey area by making it possible to use that defence in schools. As I understand my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, new clause 10 tries to go in precisely the opposite direction by defining someone acting in loco parentis only as someone who is genuinely the parent with parental responsibilities. In replying to earlier debates, I said that as far as I was concerned, a teacher should not be striking a child whatever setting they are working in, but there is clearly a grey area in law. I then wrote to our adviser, Sir Roger Singleton, to set out my concerns about that grey area following discussions with the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, and I asked Sir Roger to look into the issue and report back to me. He wrote to me on 27 January. In that letter, he said that he, too, was worried that there was the potential for people who were acting in loco parentis by teaching a child at arm's length from the role of parent being able to use the reasonable punishment defence. He referred to Saturday and Sunday school teachers, youth workers, music teachers or home tutors, and went on to say:""There is another group—those carers without parental responsibility to whom parents may entrust their children, such as step-parents and grandparents, or…friends and babysitters—who may also"" be in the "in loco parentis" category. They would not be the parent under the definition referred to in the Bill, but might be seen by us as somebody who was acting in a parental way. If I, as a parent, sent my child to a Sunday school, I would not expect the Sunday school teacher to strike my child, but if I had entrusted them to a grandparent or a step-parent, the question would be whether I thought that that situation was more like that of the Sunday school teacher or someone acting with parental responsibility. Sir Roger said that we needed to think harder about this before we reached a conclusion. New clause 10 would mean that only a parent or guardian would be able to use a reasonable punishment defence, so it would exclude not only the Sunday school teacher or madrassah teacher but the step-parent, grandparent, friend or babysitter. Many of us would think that that went too far, and that is why we are worried that the definitions in the new clause are too restrictive. That was certainly Sir Roger's concern when he wrote to me in January. He also wanted to know how this would operate in practice and how we would ensure that it was properly monitored. Sir Roger told me that he needed more time to produce his report. To be honest, he asked, as independent experts always do, for more time than I wanted to give. I asked him whether he could come back to us by the end of March, and he said that he would. I guarantee to the House that I will respond to his report on the day that he makes it. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole spoke of wanting things done before we go into purdah. I do not know what timetables we are going to have— Lord Mandelson has not yet told me of his plans, nor of the Prime Minister's—but when the report comes out at the end of March, I will respond immediately. My expectation, and my personal view, is that the right thing for us is to do is to tighten up the law. I would rather move more in the direction of a tighter definition than of a wider definition. I am sympathetic to the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, but at the moment we do not know quite how to define this, and that is why Sir Roger needs to finish his work. We will have that report, with a response from us, in the public domain at the end of March.