Ministers must ban smacking now, the children’s commissioner for England has said, in her strongest intervention yet on child safety.
Rachel de Souza said that banning smacking was “a necessary step” to keep children safe, and that bans in Scotland and Wales had “taught us we need to take that step in England too”, adding “now is the time to go further”.
The commissioner made her comments to the Observer after the start last week of the trial of three relatives for the murder of Sara Sharif, the 10-year-old who died after allegedly suffering two years of abuse by her father, stepmother and uncle.
The Scottish parliament made it illegal to use corporal punishment against children in November 2020, and the Welsh assembly introduced a similar ban, giving children equal protection to adults, in March 2022.
I absolutely approve of this. There isn’t a single person in the U.K. where corporal punishment is allowed - in fact it is a criminal offence - only babies and children can be beaten. How utterly inhumane!
