Smacking Ban Campaign: Amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill – protecting adults and children from violence

The virtual roundtable will take place at 12pm on Friday 23rd April via Zoom and SWU will be represented by General Secretary John McGowan. Baroness Bennett and Baroness Walmsley who tabled the amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill supporting a ban on smacking will also be attending.

The Social Workers Union fully supports the aims of the Domestic Abuse Bill. We believe that all people, be they adults or children, should be protected from violence in any setting, including their home. We welcome the activity around this campaign and plan to introduce a new clause to the Bill that would provide greater protection to children from violence in the home by repealing the legal defence of ‘reasonable punishment’.

England’s law is behind the times. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was signed by the UK in 1990, requires the prohibition of all corporal punishment in all settings. Article 19 of the UNCRC requires states to take legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect children from all forms of physical or mental violence. The UN Committee on the Rights of the child has affirmed that this includes protection from all forms of corporal punishment.

Sixty countries already have full bans, including Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Germany and Portugal. Scotland and Wales have both recently legislated to ban the physical punishment of children, and the Northern Ireland Assembly is considering the same issue. This means that England’s continued acceptance of the physical punishment of children is completely out of line with the good practice demonstrated within other parts of the UK and many other countries – the physical punishment of children has been outlawed in the majority of OECD countries.