Consultation on smacking
Government proposals to tell parents how to hit their children will open the UK to international ridicule, an alliance of 260 organisations has claimed. In its submission on ‘Protecting children, Supporting parents’, the Department of Health’s consultation on smacking, Children Are Unbeatable! called for the Victorian defence of ‘reasonable chastisement’ to be removed, thereby giving children the same protection as adults under the law on assault.
It also warned the Government that, if enacted, the proposals would ‘seriously undermine its positive policies for strengthening and supporting families, for child protection and for crime prevention’, as has been outlined in its Green Paper Supporting Families. It said, ‘That children, who are smaller and more vulnerable than the rest of us, should have less protection from being hit than adults contradicts common humanity.’ It added, ‘The proposals are incompatible with the Government’s commitment to human rights and with its obligations under international law.
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