GIVE MP'S A FREE VOTE ON SMACKING

Protect our children

The commons will decide this week on a fundamental principle of human rights. A proposal to ban smacking, so giving children the same legal protection as adults, is a clear issue of conscience. As campaigners have noted, liberty to vote according to belief on foxes' welfare should surely be extended to children's interests. And still ministers are resisting a free vote and demanding that MPs approve a compromise plan allowing light smacking. This insistence is perverse and dangerous. Clause 56, the halfway measure, has been condemned as unworkable by the police and invidious by child protection agencies. Its implicit message — carry on smacking — would leave children more at risk than the status quo, which permits 'reasonable chastisement'. Removing this ancient defence is not a matter of great controversy. Every charity and agency involved in child welfare wants smacking banned. So, according to a Mori poll, do 71 per cent of adults. Bans elsewhere in Europe are popular and effective, and experts confirm that excluding minor prosecutions would ensure that non-violent parents were not hauled before the courts.

And yet the government — no doubt fearful of Middle England's wrath — wants the Children Bill, drafted expressly to stop abuse, to go to the statute book minus this vital provision. It would be a disgrace for an administration intent on putting children at the heart of policy to deny to the most vulnerable the rights accorded to the strong. The government should sanction a free vote and allow MPs to approve a measure that will spare anguish and save lives.

31 October 2004
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,6903,1340098,00.html
 

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