Paediatricians seek smacking ban across UK to match Wales and Scotland

Parents in England and Northern Ireland should be banned from smacking their children because doing so is unjust, dangerous and harmful, leading doctors urged ministers today.

It was “a scandal” that Scotland and Wales had outlawed smacking but not the other two home nations, said the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Smacking children made them much more likely to suffer poor mental health, do badly at school and be physically assaulted or abused, it added, condemning the practice as “a complete violation of children’s rights”.

Parents in England and Northern Ireland should no longer be able to claim that hitting their child was “reasonable punishment”, as was allowed as the law stood, they said.

The paediatricians want the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, to change the law before the general election later this year. All political parties should include a commitment to do so in their election manifestos, they added.

“The laws around physical punishment as they stand are unjust and dangerously vague,” said Prof Andrew Rowland, a consultant paediatrician who is the college’s officer for child protection. “They create a grey area in which some forms of physical punishment may be lawful and some are not.”

The vagueness created by the “lack of legislative clarity … makes it extremely challenging to talk to families abut what the rules are on physical punishment of children, thus making it more difficult to talk about the best interests of their children”, he added.

Rowland said he saw children “sometimes once a week” at his clinics in Manchester who had been hit by a parent.

“I see children who have been physically punished with a smack or a slap [or] sometimes with an implement. They can be hit on their leg, arm, back or bottom.

“I’ve seen this happen to children aged two to 18. This is wrong for all children, no matter what the circumstances, and it leaves them upset, angry and confused. It shouldn’t happen.”

Bess Herbert, an advocacy specialist at campaign group End Corporal Punishment, said “hundreds of studies” had found that besides physical and mental harm the damage from being smacked could include poorer cognitive development, a higher risk of dropping out of school, increased aggression and perpetrating violence and antisocial behaviour as adults.

The Department for Education has been approached for comment.