Doctors demand total smacking ban in England
Laws must be changed to ensure that smacking a child is not seen as acceptable in any circumstances, paediatricians have demanded.
The law in England and Northern Ireland has created “grey areas” which mean there is sometimes a defence to physical punishment, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) said.
Wales made any type of corporal punishment, including smacking, hitting, slapping and shaking, illegal in March 2022, while Scotland had already introduced a similar ban in November 2020.
The RCPCH said that amendments to the Children Act 2004 for England and the Law Reform Order 2006 for Northern Ireland “to remove the ‘reasonable punishment’ defence from all UK law are long overdue”.
Professor Andrew Rowland, a consultant paediatrician who is the RCPCH’s officer for child protection, said: “The laws around physical punishment as they stand are unjust and dangerously vague.
“They create a grey area in which some forms of physical punishment may be lawful, and some are not.”
He said he was “regularly faced with situations where it is alleged that physical punishment has been used against a child” but that the “vague nature of the laws make it extremely challenging” to talk to families about what the rules are and therefore more difficult to talk about the best interests of their children.
Professor Rowland said: “There must be no grey areas when it comes to safeguarding children. Changing the laws in England and Northern Ireland will give us absolute clarity and ensure that there are no instances where it is acceptable or lawful to smack a child.”
The NSPCC’s Joanna Barrett (inset) said that children in England and Northern Ireland continued to be “exposed to a legal loophole that can undermine their basic right to protection under the guise of ‘reasonable chastisement”’.
She added: “That’s why we are calling on political leaders in England and Northern Ireland to commit to bringing an end to the physical punishment of children – as the rest of the UK has successfully done.” But Simon Calvert, from the Be Reasonable Campaign, claimed that calls for a law change were “motivated by ideology, not by clinical evidence, and elected representatives must reject them”.
He said: “The current law strongly prohibits all violence against children, while protecting parents from prosecution for innocent and harmless parenting decisions.
“The reasonable chastisement defence is, by definition, limited to actions the court deems reasonable.”
The Westminster and Northern Ireland governments have been contacted for comment.
The RCPCH’s report on the issue argued that, ahead of a general election, this was a time for all political parties to “make meaningful commitments on this important children’s rights issue”.