Children: Physical Punishment

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right to draw attention to that terrible case, and to the requirement, whenever we are faced with tragedies such as that, to learn the right lessons about how we need to reform the system. On her particular point about workers, one of the ways that we improve the way in which social workers and others, whether agency or otherwise, work is to increase their capacity, to focus them, as we are doing, on neglect and abuse, and to improve their training. We will continue to do that while, of course, learning the lessons from tragedies such as the one that she has identified today.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, it is already the case that the serious assault of a child is illegal. What we are talking about is smacking children. Is there any evidence that, since that has been introduced into countries, parents are being prosecuted—that is what it means; prosecuting parents—and that that has helped the situation?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that it is, as I have emphasised, already illegal to assault a child. He is also right to identify what we can most effectively do to prevent parents feeling that they need to resort to smacking in order to discipline or control their children. The £900 million that we are investing in the Best Start in Life centres, for example, is being used to develop parenting education on behaviour management. How do you set appropriate boundaries? What type of methods should you and could you use to discipline your children? That feels like a more constructive and wide-ranging response than a change in the law at this point.