A report, Why Smacking Babies, Toddlers and Children Should Be Banned, was published last week by the Children are Unbeatable Alliance, before the Scottish Executive ditched the outlawing of smacking children from its flagship Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. The report said both the Westminster Government and the Scottish Executive are breaching the human rights of children. A second report, Equal Protection for Children, published by the NSPCC, has looked at successful reforms in several countries and called for a change to UK law, mass public education to promote non-violent ways of disciplining children and investment in positive parenting programmes.
The Children are Unbeatable Alliance - an 800-member, broadly-based amalgam of professional organisations, academics, medical experts and celebrities - is pressing for legal reform to give UK children the same protection under the law as adults. It said the debate about banning smacking had been 'confused, oversimplified and ill-informed, with virtually no input from experts in the field' and had become sidetracked by spurious claims that parents would be prosecuted for 'trivial smacks'.
The Alliance insisted that prosecutions would only be brought if they were in the public interest, in the same way that trivial assaults between adults are not prosecuted. It said, 'Since Sweden introduced a ban 20 years ago, there have been no prosecutions for trivial smacks, and child deaths at the hands of a parent fell there by nearly 90 per cent to one in seven years, compared to between one and two per week currently in the UK.'
In its report, the NSPCC examined successful reforms in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Cyprus, Latvia, Croatia, Germany and Israel and a recent supreme court ruling against physical punishment in Italy. The report concluded, 'The NSPCC believes that UK law should be modernised. The current law, dating back to 1860, does not protect children properly and undermines the work of child protection professionals.
'It also sends a dangerous and misleading message to all parents that hitting children is acceptable and safe.'
Last year the Department of Health announced that the law would remain unchanged in England and Wales, leaving the 1860 legal defence of 'reasonable chastisement' in place, giving adults a continued green light to hit children. Physical punishment is legal in the home, but is banned in nurseries, schools, foster care and care homes, though childminders in England are allowed to hit children with parental permission.