Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Meyer and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I too oppose the removal of the defence of reasonable punishment. I realise that Amendment 97 from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, no longer does that directly, but it is intended as a staging post, and this is why I would like to talk about the issue.

As a child, I was subjected to physical punishment. My parents were overly strict. My father came from a military background and my mother had little patience with children. I was also a boarder at a Catholic school, where the nuns were extremely strict. On one occasion, I was caught talking to my neighbour and was made to kneel on the platform by the teacher’s desk with tape placed over my mouth for the rest of the lesson. This was a clear violation and would rightly be unacceptable today.

However, we must draw a distinction between physical punishment and hitting a child and an occasional light smack that causes no harm. These are not the same morally, psychologically or legally. English law reflects that distinction. Any punishment that causes injury, leaves marks, involves implements or amounts to abuse is illegal and rightly prosecuted. The defence of reasonable punishment applies only to the lightest chastisement where no harm is caused. It does not excuse abuse nor physical punishment. It prevents ordinary parents being treated as criminals when, from time to time, they apply proportionate discipline to an unruly child. To remove it is another step towards a nanny state where the balance between parental responsibility and state intervention is quietly but significantly shifted away from families and towards government control.

All children are not the same. Some respond to a word or a look and never need to be scolded; others test the boundaries. For those children, the calm assertion of parental authority is not cruelty but guidance, helping them learn limits, responsibility and respect for rules. I am also a parent. On one occasion, after repeatedly warning my eldest son, I smacked him lightly on his bottom. It did not hurt him, but he was so shocked that I followed through that he howled in indignation. His pride was hurt. After that, when I warned him, he believed me. It was not fear; it was authority, exercised once and never repeated.

Surely this should not be criminalised. Polling consistently shows that more parents favour retaining the current law than banning smacking. We are told that the law is unclear. It is not. The current test is simple. If harm is caused, the behaviour is illegal. Removing the defence would replace that clarity with subjective judgments, creating confusion for parents, police and social services.

The experience in Wales and Scotland, which my noble friend talked about, is that bans have led to thousands of additional referrals to social services, diverting attention from children who are genuinely at risk. A similar ban in England would cost at least £145 million, at a time when services are already under extreme pressure. What is needed is education, support and awareness, not criminal law. Legal bans invite denunciations, investigation and fear, not better parenting.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when I saw Amendment 97, I was pleased to see that the focus was on the post-implementation review report on the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Act. I am keen that the UK Government dig deeper into the impact of what is known as the Welsh smacking ban. I am keen that the Government review the evidence and data and, I hope, draw a conclusion that this should not be brought into UK law—but that they do that by looking at the evidence.

As somebody in Wales, I have obviously been involved in this debate for some time. I have had lots of media discussions and spoken on the issue over the years. Having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, talk about the report, I felt as though we probably read different reports and had different interpretations, which just shows that it is worth digging into. I have some serious reservations about the success of the law change, as there have been some rather unintended, though predictable, outcomes. I want to raise a few of those.

I understand that the proposers of this amendment are motivated by concern about the abuse of children, but it is important to note that we are all motivated by a concern about the abuse of children. That is something that we share. But one of my worries is the impact of the law change, given the pressures it is placing on social services in Wales. Thousands of new referrals have been made to Welsh social services that have involved the police, and these are costing millions of pounds and lots of time. To be honest, this can mean that real abuse is being squeezed out or relativised by what is happening.

The influx of referrals is not a surprise when any report of smacking automatically triggers an investigation by social services. The escalation of reports is no doubt because of the Welsh Government’s guidance to a wide range of organisations which work with, care for or volunteer with children that anyone who witnesses a parent smacking a child should immediately contact social services. My concern is that valuable resources are being taken away from protecting children who are at genuine risk of harm and diverted into trivial cases where harm has not been caused. Even if people ideologically do not agree with the chastisement of smacking, it is not the same as abuse. Even the most zealous anti-smacking campaigner—or so I thought, before I heard some people in this debate—should concede that a well-intentioned tap on the back of a tot’s hand or leg by a parent who loves their child does not mean that they are an abuser.

I was a bit shocked when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, say that any child might say, “If I don’t get a good grade, I’ll be beaten”. It is a shocking thing to hear a child say that, when it is actually illegal to beat a child in this country—of course it is. The idea that that is the same as smacking, in the way that the law in England permits, and the conflation of brutality with smacking—a mild physical chastisement as parental discipline—is the kind of sleight of hand that distorts the evidence, makes this a far too emotional discussion and is so insulting to parents. That is what I found shocking.

If we examine the guidance notes issued by various Welsh local authorities, we can see how resources that might be best spent protecting children at serious risk of beating if they do not pass their exams, for example—and that would be worth investigating—can become diverted. One example used in a guidance note was when a teacher reported that a young pupil stated his father smacked him because he was naughty. The advice from the Welsh Government was that the teacher should trigger a Section 47 investigation, which would include two uniformed officers visiting and talking to the four year-old. That sort of escalation, dragging the family into the orbit of social services and police forces, is what I worry about. There are obvious implications for the workload of front-line staff with a statutory duty to investigate all referrals, regardless of severity. That creates a danger of services being unable to prioritise cases where there is a genuine risk of abuse or neglect.