AlphaMummy: does smacking work?

A fresh attempt to ban parents smacking their children is being launched today by a cross-party group of MPs.

More than 400 organisations, including the NSPCC and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, are backing the new bid to give children the same protection against assault as adults.

The last attempt to outlaw smacking four years ago was defeated despite a rebellion by 47 Labour MPs. At the time a compromise was agreed, tightening the law by outlawing punishment which left physical marks or caused mental harm.

Now MPs are urging ministers to allow them to vote according to their conscience when they debate the Children and Young Persons Bill.

However, despite Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs being given a free vote on the issue, Labour's leadership has made it clear it will not do so.

Kevin Barron, the Labour chairman of the all-party Commons Health Committee who is leading the campaign, said: “We must act now to end the legal approval of hitting children.

"It is the responsibility of Parliament to ensure that the physical integrity and human dignity of every person is respected. The current law allowing so-called ‘reasonable punishment’ of children is unjust, unsafe and unclear, and must be abolished once and for all.”

Insiders say the amendment has little chance of ever becoming law. But campaigners say that a vote will now be closer, particularly because more than 100 Labour MPs have indicated their support for a free vote. Some backbenchers say they are prepared to defy Government whips if ministers do not back down.

Natascha Engel, a Labour MP, said: “We don’t want to talk about rebellions at a time when we should be showing a united front. But many of us are being put in an impossible position of choosing between party loyalty and a reform that we believe in passionately. A free conscience vote is such a simple and potentially popular way forward.”

Many Labour Peers are also calling for a free vote. But a Government review last year showed there was scant public support for a change in the law.

Sir William Utting, spokesman for the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, said: “This is one of those principled reforms on which politicians must make a stand whatever the pollsters might say. It is about being serious about equality and about the human rights of the child. The law must send the clear message that hitting children is as unacceptable as hitting anyone else.”

According to the last major British study into smacking, nine out of ten children said they had been hit.

A report published last week by the UN committee monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Britain called for the legal defence of “reasonable punishment” to be scrapped.

Of the 27 members of the European Union, only four (including Britain) have failed to give children equal protection from assault or made a commitment to do so.

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