Should smacking children continue to be allowed?

Campaigners have been left disappointed after the government revealed that it did not have any plans to ban the smacking of children as a physical punishment in England. A new Bill about the safeguarding and wellbeing of children is working its way through Parliament. The have previously indicated that they would support a ban on physically punishing a child, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying in 2022: “I would like to see the rest of the UK step into line here".

Both Wales and Scotland have strengthened protections for children this decade, extending the same protection from harm that adults have to them. In England and Northern Ireland, parents can currently justify hitting their own child as "reasonable punishment", although causing actual or grievous bodily harm is prohibited under the Children Act of 2004. Campaigners saw the new Children's and Wellbeing Bill as a chance for England to outlaw smacking, but it will not be under consideration now, according to .



Asked about the calls, Minister Bridget Phillipson said: "The wider point in terms of reasonable chastisement, of course, we will always look at these areas, but we do not have any plans to legislate." Protections for children have come under intense scrutiny following the murder of Sara Sharif at the hands of her father, Urfan Sharif, 42, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30. Urfan Sharif claimed in a call to police, after fleeing England for Pakistan, that he "did legally punish" his daughter and that he "beat her up too much".

There has been resistance from some politicians in the past to calls for banning smacking, arguing that parents should have the freedom to decide on their children's upbringing. Nadhim Zahawi, the former Education minister, dismissed a similar proposal in 2022, stating: "I've got a nine-year-old, and I don't think I've ever smacked her but I think her mother, on occasion, has felt a need for a light smack on the arm, if she's completely naughty and misbehaving." Research generally concurs that smacking, at best, is ineffective and at worst, can lead to long-term problems such as poor mental health.

What will be in the new Children's and Wellbeing Bill include parents no longer having an automatic right to take their children out of school for home education if the young person is subject to a child protection investigation or under a child protection plan - meaning the child is suspected of being at risk of significant harm. Other aspects will include new registers to identify children not in school, and a measure giving children a unique identifier number - akin to a national insurance number - in a bid to ensure issues can be tracked and shared across services "preventing children from falling through the cracks"..