Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab) [V]]

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.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot support Amendment 82. I very strongly support the comments of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hoey and Lady Fox. The defence of reasonable chastisement was created to stop parents being prosecuted for assault when they did not deserve to be prosecuted. If a parent hits a child in a way that causes any kind of mark—the CPS would say anything more than a transient reddening of the skin—then they have used unreasonable chastisement and can quite properly be prosecuted. The reasonable chastisement defence helps to ensure that good parents do not find themselves accused of being a child abuser for doing something perfectly gentle and humane. This defence therefore exists, first, to keep children safe and, secondly, to protect loving, decent parents. The current law does not need amending; it achieves the right balance. Who, after all, wants to criminalise reasonable behaviour?

Friends of ours had a child taken from their family by overenthusiastic social workers, quite wrongly, which caused enormous distress. It was because of an unexplainable bruise. I expect that most of us experienced reasonable chastisement when we were children. In 2017, a ComRes poll found that this was the experience of 85% of adults. If reasonable chastisement was so harmful that it deserved to be criminalised, you would expect eight out of 10 adults to manifest the same symptoms as children who have been abused. But of course they do not. How many of us whose parents loved us, cared for us and taught us right from wrong think our childhoods would have been better if our parents had been prosecuted merely for giving us a well-deserved smack on the bottom? That is what this amendment would mean for families today.

Parents know their own children. They are best placed to judge whether a tap on the hand of a toddler who has resisted all other blandishments is the right call. I would strongly challenge the assumption that every parent who smacks their child should be described as hitting and violent. None of us approves of such actions. Parents have a huge range of tactics and strategies at their disposal to help their children grow up into kind, diligent adults: gentle instruction, words of praise, the naughty step and withdrawing privileges. But for many parents, reasonable chastisement sometimes fits the bill. Who are we to make criminals of those whose parenting philosophy differs from our own on this point?

For every person who claims that such common-sense parenting is damaging, we have thousands of sensible parents living in the real world who are convinced otherwise. Opinion poll after opinion poll shows that three-quarters of the public do not want to expose parents who use reasonable chastisement to the full force of the criminal law. This amendment is neither necessary nor wanted by the public. We should not use the criminal law to enforce political fashions and condemn the mums and dads of today for making the same decisions that many of us have made. We must let parents decide for themselves. Common sense should not result in a criminal record, and that is not an alarmist statement.

Last year, as we have been told already, Scotland passed a law banning smacking, while telling critics again and again that removing the reasonable chastisement defence would not result in parents being criminalised. Yet less than a month before the ban came into effect, the Scottish Government published advice telling members of the public to dial 999 to report a crime in progress if they saw a parent smacking their child. We are only months into the implementation of that law in Scotland, so we must wait and see what happens once the authorities begin to enforce it in earnest. So far, there is a lack of evidence that criminalising parents has reduced domestic abuse in countries that have introduced so-called smacking bans.

Instead of attacking good parents we should be reassuring them of our support, especially after the challenging year that families have experienced. There would be a real danger in including this amendment in the Domestic Abuse Bill. Loving parents are not domestic abusers and it is insulting to suggest otherwise. A gentle tap on the hand to discourage a persistent two year-old from putting their finger in every plug socket they encounter is not child abuse but responsible parenting. Abusive parents are already caught by the law, but this amendment would task police and social services with targeting not abusive but loving parents. It would be a serious mistake.