Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)

My Lords, the long title of this Bill starts by stating that it is to: “Make provision about the safeguarding and welfare of children”. The Bill’s focus on well-being will be undermined if we allow intergenerational cycles of violence towards children to remain perpetuated. Amendment 67, along with the consequential Amendment 505, seeks to closes a loophole in the safeguarding provision for children; a loophole that was closed in Scotland in 2019 and in Wales in 2020 but not yet in England and in Northern Ireland. Children need the same protection from assault as adults, yet lack protection because the law’s amendment 20 years ago left a loophole. When children are hit, the assaulting adult can claim that it is “reasonable chastisement”. There is no legal definition of what is reasonable; it depends on the circumstance. The line between lawful punishment and unlawful abuse is open to interpretation. Paediatrician Professor Andrew Rowland, child protection officer at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, pointed out that he is “regularly faced with difficult situations where it is alleged that physical punishment has been used against a child”. Last year’s practice review in Worcestershire into nine year-old Alfie’s death flagged up the difficulty in distinguishing “between what is lawful and proportionate and what is harmful and abusive”. The preceding year, Norfolk’s review into the death of child AK concluded that the current law is confusing. These risks are reiterated in safeguarding practice reviews, particularly as bruises are more difficult to see in skin of colour or when the child is extensively covered by clothing. The 2018 report from AFRUCA on safeguarding children in black and ethnic communities in London and Manchester found that complexity and ambiguity in England leaves many families unclear on the law, particularly those who have recently arrived in the UK. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the UK has signed up, commits states to protect children from all forms of physical violence, including corporal punishment within the family. The UN committee has explicitly stated that physical punishment is a violation of a child’s right to protection and should be banned. Around the world, 68 countries have now prohibited physical punishment and have shown a drastic reduction in the number of children being subject to severe corporal punishment. There is clear evidence that physical punishment has no positive outcomes for children, as reported in the Lancet in 2021. The review of 69 studies found that physical punishment consistently predicts increases in child behaviour problems and mental health issues and in escalating physical abuse over time, increasing the need for child protection for more severe violence. The behaviour of control by hitting becomes externalised, with ever-worsening behaviour. These associations between physical punishment and detrimental outcomes are robust across child and parent characteristics: the more that children are hit, the worse the child behaviour over time. Hitting children hurts on the outside and on the inside; it damages emotional development. Eight in 10 child runaways cite family violence as a cause. As one child said, “I was sick of my dad and his girlfriend hitting me”. Last year’s report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health shows that those who experience physical assaults in the name of punishment are two and a half times more likely to experience mental health problems and twice as likely to go on to experience significant injury and damage through more serious forms of physical abuse. Children subject to being hit in the name of discipline are more likely to bully others and to repeat the cycle of violence over and over again once they become adults. The Children’s Commissioner for Wales, alongside the other three children’s commissioners, supports extending equal protection for all children in the UK. This amendment does not seek to prosecute parents. In Wales and Scotland, there has been no evidence of a significant increase in prosecutions following this change. It is about behaviour and culture change. If I hit a noble Lord, they would rightly accuse me of assault. However, England allows adults to hit a child, who will be much smaller than them, with a much more vulnerable body and emotional make-up. It is a way to vent their anger when they—the adult— cannot cope.