Hansard

I am proud to speak in this debate on behalf of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. I give my heartfelt thanks to our diligent and professional clerking team, who are an example to us all.

The bill has dominated our work programme for the past few months. It is an important bill for children and families and could affect a huge number of people in Scotland. We knew that, as a committee, we needed to hear directly from those affected, so we set out an ambitious programme of engagement. We went to meet parents and grandparents in Pollokshields, Sighthill and Midlothian. We visited young people in Kirkcaldy at the YMCA juniors club. To reach the parents and children we could not get to, we developed a meeting in a box, so that community groups could send us their views. We received responses covering more than 300 individuals. Finally, we held an external meeting and a fact-finding day in Portree on Skye.

We could not have heard from all those people without the help of a number of teams from around the Parliament. On behalf of the committee, I thank our outreach team and the engagement unit for helping us to hear from so many voices. Our thanks also go to the members of staff—official report, media, web and social media—who travelled to Portree with us, particularly our security staff, who travelled through a snowstorm to support our meeting. We appreciated having them there.

Of course, our biggest thanks go to those who informed our scrutiny. More than 450 people, many of them individuals, took the time to write to us with their views. I know that many of them have concerns about the bill and its possible effect on family life. I say to them that the committee has heard their concerns. We met people who shared with us their fears about the bill, and we listened to their views. However, we also heard that many parents today do not smack their children and that Scottish society is moving that way in any event, but that we need legislation and support to help parents to find alternative approaches to discipline.

We also heard from children and young people, who told us their thoughts. Our particular thanks go to the children of Portree high school and bun-sgoil Ghàidhlig Phort Rìgh, who shared their opinions intelligently and freely. The preparation that they put in ahead of our visit was most impressive. Tapadh leibh airson fàilte cho cridheil a chur oirnn ann am Port Rìgh.

Since the extension of its remit in 2016, the committee has, wherever possible, taken a human rights-based approach to its work. That approach informs our work with children and young people. A human rights approach recognises that children have the right to participate, to be listened to and to have their views recognised and respected. That has been central to our work on the bill, which, after all, has children at its core.

The bill is about rights; it is about the right that children have to be free from violence in every setting, including the home. Home should be a place of safety and comfort where a child is nurtured. Therefore, it is extraordinary that the home is the one place where children are allowed to be hit—and it is only children who are allowed to be hit, not partners or pets.

All of us have the right to have our private and family life respected. Much of the evidence that we heard questioned whether there was a conflict between the right of a child to be free from violence and the right of parents to raise children as they believe best. We were reassured by the many witnesses who told us that the right to family life does not include a right to use physical punishment. The Scottish Human Rights Commission said that the European Court of Human Rights has determined several times that the right to family life is not interfered with by prohibiting physical punishment of a child. It went on to say that physical punishment clearly interferes with a child’s right to dignity.

Because of their physical and mental immaturity, children are entitled to and require more, not less, protection from violence than adults do, and we, as adults and parliamentarians, have a duty to uphold the rights of all vulnerable people.

On our visits and as part of our engagement, we met parents who told us that they had been smacked and were fine, or that they smacked their children with no ill effect. We heard that there is a marked difference between violence against children and a “loving smack”. Nevertheless, the evidence that we heard from experts and academics is that physical punishment has negative effects, which range from depression and mental health issues to an increased tendency on the part of those who are punished in that way to use violence themselves. As Jane Callaghan, professor of child wellbeing and protection at the University of Stirling, told us, it makes no difference whether those smacks were administered in love or in anger: the effect is the same.

In the course of our evidence taking, we heard many times that parents need to smack children in certain situations—the child might be reaching for something hot, or they might be about to run into the road—but Dr Louise Hill from the centre for excellence for looked-after children in Scotland put it best when she told us:

“as a parent of young children, if they run into traffic, my immediate response is to hold them. I get hold of my children and I keep them safe.”—[Official Report, Equalities and Human Rights Committee, 28 February 2019; c 34.]

That is what the bill attempts to do—it shows children and young people that, as a society and as a Parliament, we want to keep them safe. It puts their rights at the centre of our policy making, and it aims to support families in doing so.

The majority of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee supports the general principles of the Children (Equal Protection from Assault) (Scotland) Bill.