Calls have been made to ban the smacking of children in England as children's rights should be "supported".
Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza previously signalled her support for changing the law to give children the same protection from assault as adults, GloucestershireLive reports. Last month, Wales made any type of corporal punishment, including smacking, hitting, slapping and shaking, illegal in the country.
The “smacking ban”, as it is known, was brought in under the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Act 2020 and marks the end of the common law defence of “reasonable punishment”. It came after Scotland introduced its own ban in November 2020.
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Previously, and as is still the case in England and Northern Ireland, smacking a child was unlawful, but such an assault was allowed as long as it constituted “reasonable punishment”. This however depended on the circumstances of each case, taking into consideration factors such as the age of the child and the nature of the contact.
Dame Rachel se Souza told Times Radio: “I absolutely abhor, and I’m against, violence of any kind against children. Because children are more vulnerable than adults, I think we do need to ensure that their rights are supported.”
In Wales, parents or anyone who is responsible for a child while the parents are absent can now face criminal or civil charges if they are found to have physically disciplined a young person in any way. Critics of the law change have said it will criminalise parents.
Dame Rachel urged ministers to look at how the legislation moved through the Welsh assembly and said she would support a decision to follow suit. Government insisted the move was about protecting children’s rights.
She added: "Scotland and Wales have done this (banned the physical punishment of children). So we’ve learnt a lot about what that would mean, as it goes into legislation. I think we’ve got a great opportunity to look, watch it, as it’s embedded (in Wales), and I would be supportive - certainly, from what I’ve seen so far - I would be supportive if our government decided to do the same.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer previously said the move should be mirrored in England and Northern Ireland, calling it “the right thing” to do. However, WalesOnline reports that Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said he did not believe the state should be “nannying” parents about the way they bring up their children.
He said: "My very strong view is that actually we have got to trust parents on this, and parents being able to discipline their children is something that they should be entitled to do. We have got to just make sure we don’t end up in a world where the state is nannying people about how they bring up their children."
