MPs to push for UK smacking ban » Communities » 24dash.com

MPs will make a fresh push today for a ban on parents smacking their children.

A cross-party group has tabled an amendment to legislation being debated in the Commons that would give youngsters the same protection against assault as adults.

But the Government is opposed to the change and rebel Labour MPs are angry that they have been refused a free vote on the issue unlike colleagues in other parties.

The move is being led by Kevin Barron, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons health select committee, who said the UK was out of step with other European countries.

He 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.

"I am disappointed that we have not got a free vote," Mr Barron added, arguing that it should be a matter of conscience and not subject to a Government whip.

"Over 100 Labour MPs wanted a free vote but when it was brought up (at Monday's meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party) it was made quite clear there would not be one."

The issue was last voted on by the Commons in 2004 when 47 Labour MPs rebelled and voted unsuccessfully for a ban.

A compromise deal made it illegal for a parent to smack a child if it leaves a bruise but permitted a lighter smack or "reasonable chastisement".

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman said the Government was clear of the need to safeguard the interests of children but did not support an all-out ban on smacking.

That is in defiance of a call from the UK Children's Commissioners who earlier this year called for a total ban and attacked the Government for ignoring the views of children and professionals in refusing to outlaw such "violence".

And a highly-critical report from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child last week also demanded a change to the law to "prohibit as a matter of priority all corporal punishment in the family, including through the repeal of all legal defences."

The bid to amend the Children and Young Persons Bill to include a ban is backed by the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, a coalition of more than 400 professional and other organisations including the NSPCC, the British Association of Social Workers and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

It said the most recent study, a decade ago, found 91% of children had been hit, almost half on a weekly basis and more than a third "severely".

Alliance spokesman Sir William Utting 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."

Labour backbencher Natascha Engel complained that the lack of a free vote, offered by both the Tories and Liberal Democrats to their MPs, had put her in an "impossible position".

"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," she said.

"A free conscience vote is such a simple and potentially popular way forward."

The first hurdle for the ban bid will be getting the amendment selected for debate.

Siobhan Freeguard, of Netmums, a parental information network, said the majority of those responding to its survey believed it should be up to parents to decide whether or not to smack their children.

"It really is one of those issues that tends to polarise people's view points," she told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"Usually in a poll like this we would have a lot more people sitting on the fence... Seventy-two per cent feel it should be a parent's choice.