UK isolated on smacking law

A report, Why Smacking Babies, Toddlers and Children Should Be Banned, was published last week by the Children are Unbeatable Alliance, before the Scottish Executive ditched the outlawing of smacking children from its flagship Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. The report said both the Westminster Government and the Scottish Executive are breaching the human rights of children. A second report, Equal Protection for Children, published by the NSPCC, has looked at successful reforms in several countries and called for a change to UK law, mass public education to promote non-violent ways of disciplining children and investment in positive parenting programmes.

The Children are Unbeatable Alliance - an 800-member, broadly-based amalgam of professional organisations, academics, medical experts and celebrities - is pressing for legal reform to give UK children the same protection under the law as adults. It said the debate about banning smacking had been 'confused, oversimplified and ill-informed, with virtually no input from experts in the field' and had become sidetracked by spurious claims that parents would be prosecuted for 'trivial smacks'.