Equal protection for children is an obligation not an option - Annette Brooke

6.25.13pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 26th Jun 2006

Human rights obligations to modernise the law on assault to give children equal protection are inescapable and urgent, according to a new report from the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance. This coincides with growing concern in Westminster that the UK must move quickly to end the legal acceptance of hitting children.

By failing to give children equal protection, the report shows that UK law breaches obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the European Social Charter, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other human rights treaties. "Humanity and logic suggest that children should be the first, not the last, members of human societies to be effectively protected from assault," the report says.

Entitled "Equal protection from assault is every child's human right", the report finds the UK under mounting pressure to act from the bodies responsible for monitoring compliance with binding United Nations and Council of Europe human rights agreements. It argues that it is now a question of how soon, rather than whether, the UK will respond and legislate to meet these human rights standards.

Earlier this month, the authoritative UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reminded all signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that equal protection from assault for children is an "immediate and unqualified obligation". The Committee stated in its 2 June General Comment on the issue that hitting children: "...conflicts with the equal and inalienable rights of children to respect for their human dignity and physical integrity. The distinct nature of children, their initial dependent and developmental state, their unique human potential as well as their vulnerability, all demand the need for more, rather than less, legal and other protection from all forms of violence..."

The UK ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 and since has twice been rebuked by the Committee on the Rights of the Child for failing to afford children equal protection (1995, 2002). In addition, only last July, the Council of Europe Committee of Social Rights found that UK law in this respect does not comply with obligations under the European Social Charter.

In January this year, the UK's Children's Commissioners also called for action: "Children have the same right as adults to respect for their human dignity and physical integrity and to equal protection under the law, in the home and everywhere else. There is no room for compromise."

Sir William Utting, spokesperson for the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, said: "This report shows that equal protection for children is a clear human rights obligation that the UK cannot wriggle out of. Political leaders should stop bowing to sensationalism about this long-overdue social reform and start defending what is a fundamental principle of equality and human rights.

"The recent United Nations move makes it crystal clear that all countries, including the UK, must act to meet human rights standards under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ifs, buts and maybes are not good enough; equal protection is an obligation not an option."

Westminster MPs and Peers are growing increasingly concerned that there should be an opportunity for a vote on equal protection for children in the early years of this Parliament. Labour backbenchers continue to plead with Ministers to allow them to vote freely according to conscience when the time comes (in the 2004 vote, Labour whipped against the equal protection proposal).

To date, more than 170 MPs from all parties have signed a current House of Commons motion on children's human right to equal protection from assault. This is more than double the parliamentary support shown for similar motions in the past (previous best: 83 signatories in 2004).

Significantly, 113 Labour MPs have backed the motion so far, stepping up the pressure on the Government to allow its parliamentarians a free vote on any future legislative bid.

Greg Pope MP (Labour), who sponsored the motion, said: "Support for this mainstream social reform is growing in Westminster, as the current Commons motion suggests. It is now time for everyone with a stake in modern progressive politics to stand up and be counted. We cannot escape our human rights obligations to give children equal protection from assault; nor should we want to."

Politicians from both Houses of Parliament welcomed the latest report from the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance:

Rt Hon Lord Kinnock (Labour) said: "Our human rights obligations to respect the physical integrity and human dignity of children are clear. To fulfil those obligations properly, children must be given the protection of the law against assault which adults take for granted in a civilised society. And we should do it quickly, before the 21st century gets much older."

Lord St John of Fawsley (Conservative) said: "The case for ending the legal and social acceptance of hitting children is unanswerable. In the 21st century it is time for all of us to move on. Affording children equal protection under the law on assault seems to me a very modest, yet essential, step in the right direction."

Annette Brooke MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on children and the family, said: "As modern liberals, we often have to balance rights for different individuals and groups. On this issue, the current law has the balance all wrong. There can be no justification for the smallest and most fragile of our citizens having less protection from assault than the rest of us take for granted."

Rt Hon Kevin Barron MP (Labour), chair of the Health Select Committee, said: "Hitting children, even if we dress it up with cosy euphemisms like 'smacking', hurts emotionally and physically. Zero tolerance of domestic violence is rightly accepted as a sensible standard for modern times, and it should be equally so where the well-being of children is concerned."

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth, Rt Revd Dr Kenneth Stevenson, said: "The moral and spiritual imperative for eliminating all forms of violence and humiliation against children must include ending physical punishment in the home. The 21st century family should be free from violence for all its members. Children learn respect, compassion and non-violence by adult example."

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC (Labour) said: "Legalised violence against children in the family breaches children's fundamental rights to respect for their physical integrity and human dignity. Affording children equal protection from assault is an inevitable consequence of our human rights obligations, which we should embrace, rather than put off, right now."

Elfyn Llwyd MP, Plaid Cymru parliamentary leader, said: "I truly believe that ending the legal and social acceptability of hitting children is one of the key tests of a modern civilised society. As such, giving children equal protection from assault is essential to drive forward the necessary cultural change."

Ends.

For further information

Tony Samphier on 0208 761 8155

Notes to editors

Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 allows the common assault of children to continue to be justified as "reasonable punishment" in England & Wales.

The Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance is the largest campaign coalition ever formed on a children's issue. More than 400 organisations support the Alliance, including the NSPCC, Save the Children, Barnardo's, the Association of Directors of Social Services, the National Childminding Association, Parenting UK, the Royal College of Midwives, the Community Practitioners' and Health Visitors' Association, the British Association of Social Workers and the Methodist Church.

More than 180 Westminster MPs and Peers are signed up to the aims of the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance.

Law reform to give children equal protection from assault has also been supported by:

• the UK parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights

• the House of Commons Health Select Committee

• the National Assembly for Wales.

• the independent Commission on Families and the Wellbeing of Children

• the UK's Children's Commissioners

Children have equal protection from assault in a third of European countries: Sweden, Finland, Norway, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Italy (by supreme court decision) Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Germany, Iceland, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine. In addition, the governments of Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Slovak Republic have announced their intention to act.

In 2004, the MORI Social Affairs Institute found that seven in ten British people (71 per cent) support a change in the law to give children equal protection from being hit in the family home. Only ten per cent opposed such a move. Parents (74 per cent), young adults under 24 years old (76 per cent) and women (73 per cent) were most likely to support law reform of this kind.

The last major UK study (Smith & Nobes for the Department of Health, 1997), interviewing parents and children, found that the large majority (91 per cent) of children had been hit. In families where both parents were interviewed, almost half the children were hit weekly or more often; one in five of the children had been hit with an implement and more than one third (35 per cent) had been punished "severely". Three quarters of mothers stated that they had already "smacked" their babies before their first birthday, and 14 per cent of one year-olds had been hit with "moderate" severity; 38 per cent of four year-olds had been "smacked" more than once a week.