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Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 2006

I apologise for missing some of the Minister’s remarks, but I want to address the same subject as the last two speakers. My views on this issue are very well known in the House. For more than a decade the UK has been roundly criticised by United Nations and European human rights bodies for having legislation which allows parents and some others to justify assaults on children as reasonable punishment. The legislation which the Government now propose to impose on Northern Ireland through this order allows common assault to be justified as reasonable punishment. As the independent expert leading the current UN Secretary-General’s study on violence against children said at a meeting in Parliament last December: "““There is nothing reasonable about hitting children””." Our children deserve nothing less than equal protection under the law. The UK expects other states to take their human rights obligations seriously and to respect the recommendations of human rights monitoring bodies. The four children’s commissioners, including Northern Ireland’s, have strongly criticised this legislation. The Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg, recently issued a paper calling for the prohibition of all corporal punishment across Europe. In it he states: "““Children have had to wait until last to be given equal legal protection from deliberate assaults—a protection the rest of us take for granted. It is extraordinary that children, whose developmental state and small size is acknowledged to make them particularly vulnerable to physical and psychological injury, should be singled out for less protection from assaults on their fragile bodies, minds and dignity””." This Government have done much good for children, but they really should grasp the nettle and stop pursuing unsatisfactory and dangerous compromises like that expressed in this order and in Section 58 of the Children Act 2004. I hope that the Minister can give us an assurance that he will try to do something to ensure that this is not put into law in Northern Ireland.