Member

That gets me to another worry that I have: the fact that parents are caught up in this. When the Welsh law change was argued for, the supporters of the change insisted that, as we have heard, the law would not be heavy-handed and that they did not want to criminalise parents—though when we had many of those debates, I thought that it would. Whether we like it or not, a new criminal category has been created in Wales, in which erstwhile parenting styles that some may have disapproved of but were legal have now been dragged into the framework of existing assault laws. Although the Welsh Government have, to be fair, sought to mitigate large-scale prosecutions—partly because the courts are so busy, so they have not been able to use them and have deployed out-of-court diversionary schemes—none the less, parents are being questioned by police and social services, investigated and accused of a criminal activity that is part of the assault of a child scheme. Some have even settled out of court. There is shame, humiliation and injustice.