THE Government’s four children’s commissioners have demanded a total ban on the smacking of children.
In a stiff letter to Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, Al Aynsley-Green, who was recently appointed the Children’s Commissioner for England, has said that children are the only people in Britain who can still be hit without consequence. It should be a matter of “fundamental principle” that children and young people should have the same protection from assault as adults, Professor Aynsley-Green writes.
An accompanying statement, also signed by the commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, says that smacking “confuses parents, inhibits child protection and undermines the promotion of positive discipline”. In the first real test of their authority the four commissioners say that the ban should be accompanied by a government-funded education programme for parents promoting non-violent forms of discipline.
Their intervention coincides this week with the first anniversary of the implementation of the 2004 Children Act, which enshrined in law a parent’s right to hit a child as a “reasonable punishment”.
The move could not come at a worse time for Ms Kelly, who is still reeling from the controversy over sex offenders in schools and facing mounting opposition on the Labour back benches to the Government’s education reforms. The Government has long resisted attempts to introduce a ban, arguing that it would be unpopular and unworkable.
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But this defence looks increasingly thin as more and more countries introduce bans on corporal punishment of children. More than one third of European countries give children equal protection from assault as adults. They include Sweden, Finland, Norway, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Germany, Iceland, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Italy and Portugal.
The governments of Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovakia have announced that they will soon do the same, and it is now widely believed among children’s rights activists that a ban in Britain is inevitable.
Historically, polls asking parents if they want to ban smacking have come up with a majority response of “no”. But more recent work by the Children Are Unbeatable Alliance, a coalition of charities opposed to smacking, asking if children should have the same legal protection as adults from assault, has elicited a resounding “yes” from parents. This response is reinforced where parents are given an assurance that a mild slap on the thigh to stop a child running out in front of a car will not result in a court appearance.
Parliamentary support for the equal protection of children is also growing. A recent early day motion on the issue was signed by 146 MPs, considerably more than the 83 who signed a similar motion in 2003. Reform has also been supported by the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Commons Health Select Committee and the National Assembly for Wales.
International pressure for a smacking ban in this country has also been steadily mounting after a 1998 ruling in the European Court of Human Rights that English law failed to provide children with “adequate protection” in the case of a young boy beaten by his stepfather. Last July, the Council of Europe body responsible for monitoring conformity with the European Social Charter found that British law breached human rights obligations.
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The Government’s response has been to change the ancient smacking defence of “reasonable chastisement” to one of “reasonable punishment” — hardly a major leap.
In Scotland, limited reforms were introduced in 2003, outlawing the smacking of children aged under 3 and banning hitting children on the head or using an implement.
A Department for Education and Skills spokesman said that the Government did not condone physical punishment of children, but smacking was a matter for parents to decide on. “Parents have to think about the law on assault and make sure their chastisement does not get to that point,” she said.
Such a stance is not surprising given that Tony Blair has admitted — with regret — smacking his older children when they were young.