IS HOLYROOD FIT TO MAKE LAWS?

THE Smacking Bill is not fit for purpose. This we know. But the way the parliament is seeking to railroad it on to the statute book raises much bigger questions – about whether Holyrood itself is fit to make the nation’s laws.

This week, for the first time since my election three years ago, I have started to question what on earth the point is of being an MSP.

Its proponents say that the Smacking Bill is needed in order to outlaw the physical punishment of children.

Yet it is unnecessary because the criminal law already makes illegal any excessive use of force against children. It is dangerous because the Bill is so badly drafted that it criminalises all manner of things which, in a civilised society, should remain well away from the reach of the prosecutors.

If passed, the Bill will abolish the defence of reasonable chastisement. This is a defence currently available to parents, guardians and carers of children who use force in seeking to discipline their children. In law, reasonable chastisement is a defence to a charge of assault. What has been missed by the Bill’s proponents, however, is that the law of assault is much broader than they think.

Critically, you do not have to hit anyone to commit an assault. If you raise your hand as if to hit

someone, that will be assault even if you do not so much as touch them, if your action causes the person to fear that they are about to be hit.

In its current form, the Bill will make me a criminal if I shout angrily at my misbehaving children and raise my hand to them – even if I have no intention at all of hurting them. This is bonkers.

So I sought to amend the Bill so that, for its purposes, an assault could be committed only where there is an actual physical attack and where that attack is intended to cause immediate bodily harm.

Yesterday, in a sinister move to block democratic consideration of the nation’s legislation, these amendments were ruled inadmissible by the SNP’s Ruth Maguire – daughter of the Green MSP who introduced the Smacking Bill into the parliament in the first place.

She has given no reasons for her absurd decision. Ken Mackintosh has a big question to answer now – is this the sort of parliament he wants to preside over?

One thing I know is that it’s clearly not the sort of parliament to serve the open and democratic Scotland that I believe in.