Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Baroness Meyer and Lord Storey(3 days, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, started her contribution, she said that we should look at the evidence from Wales, and I thought, fair enough. That is what the Government are going to do, are they not? But then, towards the end of her contribution, she said that we should look at the evidence from Wales but not emulate it. That evidence suggests that we take this course of action. We are all getting hung up and concerned about the harmful effects of social media and of mobile phones. What about the harmful effects of smacking? It is hard to believe that 40 years ago, we still had corporal punishment in schools; they probably debated it in this Chamber. Children were caned or slippered. A few noble Lords probably got up and said that this was not a good idea. We can imagine the contributions, at the time, from the likes of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about that suggestion. I am sorry—I must not do that.
We have had a debate, and the work and experiments in Wales have been mentioned several times. But the most important people in all this are the children, are they not? What about them? Children who experience physical punishment are up to 2.6 times more likely to develop mental health problems, and up to 2.3 times more likely to go on to experience harm through more serious forms of physical abuse. This is the most worrying thing to me.
In 2023-24, over 700 children—we are probably talking about young children—contacted Childline to complain about, worry about or cry about physical abuse. What do we do? We go chatting on about all sorts of other things. I am disappointed that we are not having a Division on this: I would like to know how people feel. I am sure that the majority of Labour Members are absolutely on the side of doing away with corporal punishment. Some have been noticeably quiet, and I understand why; that is perhaps a cruel dig. I also accept, however, that we want to look at what has gone on in Wales and use that as the basis for coming to a conclusion. I am sure that those Members are genuine about this and are not using it as an opportunity to delay the matter beyond the general election. If they are still in office—and they could well be—could they please bring this forward immediately after the general election, and let us have a vote on it? This is a corporal punishment issue that is just as important as it was 40 years ago.
