Corporal Punishment Lawful with Parental Consent

Part of Orders of the Day — Education Bill – in the House of Commons at 8:30 pm on 28 January 1997.

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Photo of Eric Forth Eric Forth , Mid Worcestershire 8:30, 28 January 1997

It is about 10 years since corporal punishment was last debated in the House. I shall leave it to others to decide whether this debate was worth waiting for. My hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), as we expected, argued their cases with commitment. We were not disappointed. I hope that it will come as no surprise to the House when I say that the Government will resist the new clauses.

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear, the Government will not support the new clauses. The remarks of the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) were a disgrace. For him to imply to his doctrinaire friends that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would support the new clauses was grossly dishonest, but the House will not be surprised that I am not surprised about that.

I recognise that new clause 6 is the attempt of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North to bring back corporal punishment. His new clause would effectively repeal the prohibition of the use of corporal punishment, which is set out in section 548 of the Education Act 1996. The effect of that would be broadly to revive the common law principle that applied before the Education (No. 2) Act 1986—that a teacher acting in loco parentis would be able, where merited, lawfully to administer corporal punishment, even where parents specifically objected to that form of punishment. That would be in violation of the European convention on human rights.