{"id":64358,"date":"2025-05-01T01:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T01:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/64358\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T01:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T01:08:11","slug":"fresh-calls-to-remove-morally-repugnant-defence-for-smacking-children-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/64358\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh calls to remove \u2018morally repugnant\u2019 defence for smacking children \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

NORTHERN Ireland\u2019s Children\u2019s Commissioner has repeated calls to ban smacking or \u201clegal assault\u201d of young people. <\/p>\n

Scotland and Wales have already banned any physical punishment of children, but in Northern Ireland and England parents can still use the defence of \u201creasonable punishment\u201d for hitting, slapping or smacking.<\/p>\n

Chris Quinn<\/a> has now joined with his counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales as the Children\u2019s Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to Westminster on Thursday.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, is calling for the \u201creasonable punishment\u201d defence to be removed, while Mr Quinn has demanded an end to the defence in the NI Justice Bill.<\/p>\n

\"Music<\/a>\"Belfast<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs children\u2019s commissioners, we solidly believe that the current law that permits child physical punishment is severely out of touch with children\u2019s rights and must be repealed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"NorthernNorthern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, Chris Quinn. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is deeply concerning that despite repeated efforts, children in Northern Ireland and England still do not have the same protection from assault as adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the \u201clegal inequality violates children and young people\u2019s fundamental rights,\u201d and that \u201cviolence of any kind, whether it is physical or psychological, should never be part of a child\u2019s upbringing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Quinn said he supported accessible services that help parents \u201cbuild positive approaches\u201d and urged the Stormont Executive to fund a Family and Parenting Strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy office and I insist that equal protection is included in the Justice Bill, which is currently at justice committee stage in the Assembly, as a matter of urgency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dame Rachel added: \u201cThere is no degree of violence that should ever be acceptable in a child\u2019s life. We still see this happening far too often with horrific consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cA child should never grow up living in fear, especially from the people who are supposed to love and care for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Westminster government has confirmed it will review evidence from Scotland and Wales before making a decision on the law, but the children\u2019s commissioners say more urgent action is needed to remove the \u201coutdated and morally repugnant\u201d defence.<\/p>\n

Mr Quinn added that evidence in Scotland and Wales showed that introducing equal protection has not resulted in parents being \u201cunnecessarily criminalised,\u201d but showed that children deserve to be treated with the same respect and protection as their parents and caregivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be clear, equal protection is not about punishing parents; it\u2019s about protecting children and ensuring our laws are fair, consistent, and focused on the best interests of children. The time for change is now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTHERN Ireland\u2019s Children\u2019s Commissioner has repeated calls to ban smacking or \u201clegal assault\u201d of young people. Scotland and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[2420,389,23523,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-64358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-parenting","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-health-and-social-care","11":"tag-northern-ireland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114429906389562170","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}