More state meddling in the lives of families
ONLY days ago, the SNP finally scrapped its Orwellian plans for the Named Person scheme. But now family life faces another intrusion from the state – in the form of a ban on smacking.
For more than a decade, ministers insisted such a move was needless, as the existing law was sufficient.
The reason for the change in stance is clear: the prohibition on parental smacking was instigated by the Greens, the SNP’s unofficial partners in power.
Behind the Bill is a noble intention to protect children, and from the outset both its supporters and critics have accepted that – of course – children should never be subjected to violence.
But criminalisation of parents is another example of the ham-fisted law-making now characteristic of the way our blundering parliament operates.
As Jonathan Brocklebank points out elsewhere on this page, it is all too often abuse of a very different type that leads to lasting psychological harm for children.
The fallout for our overstretched police force is also likely to be severe, as officers are called in to reports of parents spotted reprimanding their children.
There could be nightmarish consequences for the mum or dad who taps their child on the back of the legs if they have attempted to run out in front of traffic.
Those who championed this legislation dismiss these objections as hysterical. But have ministers and their officials forgotten that, in the early days of devolution, a similar attempt to ban smacking was ditched as unworkable?
This week, the Mail revealed the number of schoolchildren caught with knives and other weapons used to commit a crime has risen by 18 per cent in the past year.
Teachers warn serious indiscipline is rife: last year, a union survey revealed that nearly one in five secondary school teachers has been assaulted by pupils.
Against this troubling backdrop, the Scottish Government has targeted parents – not those who beat their children, who are already committing an offence – but those who use reasonable chastisement.
Some of the virtue-signalling MSPs who backed the smacking ban have smeared opponents as tantamount to child abusers.
In one of the most outrageous interventions, an SNP councillor claimed in 2017 that ‘most Unionists appear to like hitting children’.
Demonising those who questioned the ban is a measure of the extent to which its proponents have run out of any meaningful argument for it to exist: instead they have resorted to juvenile name-calling.
The smacking ban is impractical and poorly drafted, and another illustration of the growing disconnect between our political class and the ordinary families that have to contend with the repercussions of their mistakes.
When will our hapless legislators acknowledge that when it comes to bringing up children, the people who know best aren’t politicians or their advisers – it’s the parents whose faith in government, and indeed parliament, is dwindling by the day.