Hodge: Pledging to protect children

A legislative bid to ban smacking has been heavily defeated in the House of Commons.

MPs voted by 424 to 75 against an amendment to the Children Bill that ministers warned would have "criminalised most parents".

Some 47 Labour MPs voted for the amendment which would have removed the legal defence for parents who physically chastise their children.

However, the government gained backing for a move to tighten current laws while stopping short of an outright ban.

The outcome means parents have a defence of "reasonable chastisement" if charged with assault on their children as a result of smacking.

However, the defence would not be available for a smack which cause bruises, skin reddening or mental harm.

Children's minister Margaret Hodge said the government's preferred amendment would allow smacking short of those actions which cause actual bodily harm.

"It does not criminalise parents for administering a light smack to their children," she added.

Of the total ban, Hodge said it would be wrong to create a new offence "that would leave parents wondering if a trivial smack would land them in prison".

"There is a world of difference between a light smack and violent abuse," she said.

And a total ban "could potentially criminalise most parents in this country", Hodge warned.

Status quo

A separate bid by Conservative backbencher Andrew Turner to remove all reference to smacking from the Bill, leaving the existing laws unchanged, was also defeated.

MPs voted against the proposal by 208 to 284, a narrower margin than that which defeated the total ban.

Earlier, shadow health minister Tim Loughton said Britain's child protection record was already good.

He said the overwhelming majority of parents know the difference between beating and smacking.

Smacking is "a last resort if a child has failed to respond to anything else", he added, urging a vote for the Turner amendment.

"The law should remain as it currently stands and we should return to the status quo."

Total ban

But Labour backbencher David Hinchliffe, one of the sponsors of the cross-party amendment seeking to implement a total ban, had said the reasonable chastisement defence should be scrapped.

"For some people this is an abstract academic issue. For myself and a large number of other MPs it is about the basic human rights of a significant proportion of our population," he said.

"Our strength of feeling comes from a certain knowledge that our laws and society could do a great deal more to ensure the well being of vulnerable and abused youngsters."

Hinchliffe said his intention was only to "extend the existing law to cover children equally".

"We have already extended equal protection to children in schools, nurseries and so on. This is the last logical step in establishing equality," he told the Commons.

And he added that MPs should vote to ensure "that the welfare of our children is properly safeguarded within our laws".