My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling the amendment, which I support on three grounds.
First, and perhaps most important, I support it on the grounds of children’s rights. Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says that Governments must do all they can to ensure that children are protected from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and bad treatment by their parents and anyone else who looks after them. Yet successive Governments have failed to implement the recommendation of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, that they should prohibit, as a matter of priority, all corporal punishment in the family, including the repeal of all legal defences. In the past, the Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded that the defence of reasonable punishment was incompatible with children’s rights under various human rights treaties and recommended that it be replaced with a provision drafted to remove that defence and give children the same protection from battery as adults.
Secondly, as we have already heard, despite the assertions of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that smacking—or whatever you want to call it—can have an adverse, long-term impact on children’s mental health and behaviour, as well as a negative impact on parent-child relationships, rather souring the happy, halcyon image of the family that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just painted. Back in 2015, four UK Children’s Commissioners called for the immediate prohibition of corporal punishment in the family. That was over five years ago.
Thirdly, is the example set not just by most other European and OECD countries but, as we have heard, by our own devolved nations of Scotland and Wales. It is no coincidence that, unlike the Westminster Government, these devolved nations treat the UN convention as a guiding light in their policy-making on children. If children in Scotland and Wales are no longer to be at risk of smacking on the grounds it
constitutes reasonable punishment, what possible justification is there for children in England to continue to be at risk? I am afraid I do not take the arguments put by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, as providing any such convincing justification.
No doubt the Minister will argue that this Bill is not the place for such an amendment, as did the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Hoey. That may be so, though the fact that we are debating it today means it is in the scope. But I welcome the opportunity it has given us to debate the issues it raises, and I hope the Minister will take back to the Department for Education the messages raised by the majority of those contributing to the debate and seek the meeting called for by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
There is a wider message gaining growing support in civil society: we need a Cabinet-level Minister with special responsibility for children and their needs, concerns and rights or, at the very least, the restoration of such a post at Minister of State level. I hope that child-friendly developments in England and Wales will lead to change in England too, including the repeal of the defence of reasonable punishment.