Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for introducing this important amendment to the Bill, just as I did 16 years ago when the Children Act was making its way through this House. The aim has not changed: to allow children the same legal protection from violence that adults enjoy today—no more, no less.

While the aim has not changed, the times and society certainly have. In the 1990s, parents interviewed in confidence as part of a research study commissioned by the Department of Health admitted to very high levels of corporal punishment, with the admission of violence doubling when both parents were interviewed. Three-quarters of mothers said that they had already smacked their baby before its first birthday, which is before language has developed. Over 91% of children had been hit, with the youngest and most vulnerable hit most often. Almost half the children were hit weekly or more often. One-fifth had been hit with an implement, and 35% had been punished severely, which is defined as with the intention or potential to actually cause harm to the child. That included actions that were repeated, prolonged or involved the use of implements. Today, those children are parents.

In 2021, we find ourselves a year after national lockdowns began. The pressure on parents has been enormous, and we know that if a parent hits a child, it is usually in response to pent-up feelings. When parents have been forced to be indoors 24 hours a day, trying to work and look after their children at the same time, many parents have struggled to hide their frustration at one time or another.

The circumstances of the pandemic have only emphasised the need for many of the amendments that have been accepted by the Government already. The Government have done a great deal to ensure the safeguarding of children, but the state of the law on this undermines it.

A recent paper in the Archives of Disease in Childhood showed that in one hospital in 2020 in just one month, the number of cases of serious child injury rose by almost 1,500% compared with the same period in the previous three years, pointing to a silent pandemic of abuse in 2020. Ten children aged 17 days to 13 months had head trauma. This is just one of several such reports, confirmed by the 80% increase in NSPCC referrals.

Research clearly shows that corporal punishment has all kind of negative effects on mental health, parent-child relationships, increased anti-social behaviour and child aggression. Almost all abuse takes place in the context of so-called punishment or discipline. Sweden’s experience of banning smacking has shown that it benefits children and society as a whole, and 60 countries have now followed suit.

I will address the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. Loving, caring parents need to use physical actions at times, especially with young children: to protect them, to grab them and lift them, to restrain them and so on. The amendment would not interfere with this part of day-to-day parenting, or with the ability to punish in non-violent ways. But smacking can escalate to beating the living daylights out of a child. That is what the amendment seeks to address.

Most parents report that they regret having hit, but it escalates so easily into more serious violence. Children who are pinched, slapped, shaken and spanked are seven times more likely to experience severe violence such as punching, kicking or hitting with an object. They are being taught that the way to cope with feelings of frustration in oneself is to hit someone who is vulnerable. Aggression breeds aggression. Children must learn de-escalation and parents must set the example.

In 2022, a law banning the smacking of children in Wales will come into force, thanks to Julie Morgan’s leadership on the issue. Scotland passed such legislation in October 2019, and several people have seen at first hand how counting to 10 rather than a frequent quick slap has resulted in better child behaviour. Now England should follow. The amendment will not stem the tide of domestic abuse, but it will give the next generation the same protection in law from serious abuse that we aim to afford to adults. That is why I support it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this amendment attempts to repeal the defence of reasonable punishment as part of the Children Act. In my mind, that would effectively criminalise parents for reasonably chastising their own children.

In doing so, the amendment raises a number of ethical pitfalls that the state faces whenever it legislates to police private family life in a free society. Historically, we have recognised that state interventions into family life should be rare, proportionate and handled with due respect for parental autonomy. In recent years, we have sadly seen an unfortunate trend towards top-down overreach, and this amendment is a good illustration. In the whole of the Domestic Abuse Bill, with its focus on helping those abused in domestic settings or contexts, we still need to remember that this is not a green light to tear up all the norms of privacy and liberty when it comes to family life.

Essentially, the amendment would remove the legal defence of reasonable chastisement from parents who might occasionally smack their own children. Effectively, this declares that the Government know better than loving parents, who could find themselves vulnerable to charges of common assault just for being parents

Of course, there will be people here who might not approve of slapping. We have already heard from some. But that is their business. That is no justification for overruling other parents’ decisions, or their values. Should we assume that the state always knows best when it comes to child rearing? I am sure that those raised in care homes might have a different view.

The amendment is also entirely unnecessary, because it is already illegal to aim a smack at a child’s head or to hit a child with an object, as is any smack that leads to more than the temporary reddening of skin. In other words, unreasonable punishment is already against the law, and rightly so. The vast majority of society view violence aimed at children as abhorrent. They think that beating children should be not just illegal but morally condemned, as we all do. So what would this amendment outlawing even a reasonable use of smacking achieve?

The amendment states that

“battery of a child cannot be justified on the ground that it constituted reasonable punishment.”

Of course battery cannot be justified on the basis of reasonable punishment—but think about the use of that word, “battery”. It conjures up horrors, does it not? Why was that word used in this amendment? I noticed that, in campaigns to ban smacking in Wales and Scotland, one of the most egregious tactics of anti-smacking lobbyists was this irresponsible conflation of smacking with gross acts of violence. This rhetorical trick is shameless and shamefully distorts intention and context.

It is important to state for the record that violence is physical force intended to injure. In contrast, if a mum or dad smacks a five year-old child for being naughty, they have no intention of causing injury. Rather, they, like all of us, want to teach their child right from wrong, for example by chastising them for running in front of a car. This is driven by parental love, not a desire to injure. Conflating slapping with violence paints ordinary mums and dads as potential violent thugs or child abusers. It is just so insulting. It also shows a certain distrust of ordinary parents; tonight, we heard people describing smacking and beating the living daylights out of children in the same sentence.

For the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who argued that we should treat the smacking of a child as we would treat a bodily attack on a grown adult, again, let us think about context. Do we really believe that children should not be treated differently from adults? In the real world, parents do many things to their children that they would not dream of doing to another adult. When you order a child to bed, you do not order adults to bed, do you? You check whether your child’s bottom is clean; you would not do that to an adult. We treat children—especially our own—differently from adults. If you confiscate your teen’s Xbox or phone, we do not consider that theft because of the context. It is common-sense disciplinary action, as smacking can be. Smacking is not assault; it is not even comparable. So I hope that noble Lords agree that parents are better placed to judge when and how to discipline their offspring than any number of NGOs—even if they come waving state-approved parenting manuals full of best practice checklists and “Count to 10”.

Finally, the danger with overreach is that it expands who and what is criminalised. As I have warned several times during the passage of this Bill, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, pointed out, this could open the floodgates to complaints of minor incidents and overwhelm the police and social services, which are already overstretched. When I argued this in Wales in relation to the debate there, I was assured that the legislation was not about criminalising parents, but about sending a message. However, politicians cannot change the criminal law and expect the police and courts not to enforce it. It is not a communications strategy. Also, the Scottish Government encouraged the public to phone 999 if they witnessed a parent smacking their child; they also distributed leaflets aimed at children, urging them to report on their parents. Can you imagine how divisive, demoralising and damaging that is for family life? How does it protect children if the law undermines parental authority, or if families are ripped apart by damaging police investigations because a child was smacked? It would discredit the whole concept of domestic abuse, as well as child abuse, if we treated smacking as assault under this Bill. We ourselves would launch an assault on family coherence.

Finally, for many weeks now, we, in following this Domestic Abuse Bill, have focused on the dark side of family life. Earlier this evening, we heard harrowing tales of stalking, abuse, women at risk and so on. However, we must make sure that this does not poison our world view. We should avoid starting to see abuse everywhere. Behind closed doors is not a dystopian hellhole. The majority of families are joyous places of solidarity and socialising children. Sometimes they are messy. Sometimes they are argumentative. Sometimes there is a bit of shouting. Sometimes there is the odd smack. However, they are largely full of love. This amendment suggests otherwise and should be rejected.