Children: Physical Punishment

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The law in this country gives the strong message that it is wrong to assault a child. The clear advice from government is that it is wrong to use physical punishment against a child. What is more, we are providing the support necessary to help parents to address that. We are investing in the capacity of social care to be able to identify where neglect and abuse has happened in families. We are investing in earlier intervention through the families first partnership programme. The question is whether the appropriate thing to do at this moment is to focus on changing the law. That is not our priority.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I turn to the point mentioned by my noble friend Lady Walmsley about the experiences of Scotland and Wales. Have the Government looked at the assessments that have been made by those Governments on safeguarding and the number of incidents reported to them of harm to young children?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We have looked, for example, at the Welsh report on the implementation of the abolition of the defence of reasonable punishment in Wales. As I said, the report is on the implementation of the law rather than the outcomes achieved by it. It highlights the importance of professional confidence, inter-agency collaboration and widely available parenting support. As I have already identified, those are all things in which we are investing considerable amounts of money in England and where we have taken action through legislation to transform the social care system so as to prioritise them.