Pro-family group renews call to withdraw document on child discipline

24 January 2002

Family advocacy group, Families First, last night renewed calls for Seán Mallon, Minister of Finance and Personnel, to withdraw the Office of Law Reform's consultation document on the physical punishment of children.

In November last year, the pro-family group presented the Minister with detailed evidence of the document's numerous factual inaccuracies and patent bias from beginning to end. They urged him to withdraw the document on the basis that it was fundamentally flawed and could not provide any sound basis for an informed discussion of the issues. While it claims not to take sides, the consultation paper is very much slanted against the freedom of parents to use even the mildest form of physical correction on children in Northern Ireland.

In response, Mark Durkan, the former Minister of Finance and Personnel, conceded three 'proofreading errors', but stated his full confidence in the document and declined to withdraw it. Dr Mallon supports his predecessor's stance, but both men have so far refused to provide any refutation of any of the points raised in the submission made by Families First.

Norman Wells of Families First commented: 'The Minister and the Office of Law Reform are clearly embarrassed by the facts we have set before them. They claim that to respond to our evidence would "risk the possibility of skewing the debate". But they are the ones who have skewed the debate by issuing a consultation document that is factually inaccurate, ideologically biased, based on opinion-driven research, and characterised by emotive and negative language. It is simply not good enough to dismiss hard facts without proper explanation. If there were any flaws in our submission we are sure that the Minister would have lost no time in telling us. But in the absence of any firm evidence to contradict our claims, we are persuaded that the consultation document should be withdrawn and redrafted.'

Mr Wells continued, 'The Minister and his officials are clearly playing for time in the knowledge that the consultation period is due to close at the end of January. We were assured that we would receive a full response to the points we had raised, but after a long delay all we have received is a fob-off. This consultation is the first stage in a process that could lead to new laws affecting every child and every family in Northern Ireland. If the Executive is really serious about finding out what the public thinks, it should issue an objective consultation paper based on fact and ditch the current document with its strong ideological bias.'

Notes for editors

1. The submission made by Families First to the Minister will be found at http://www.families-first.org.uk/bp/2001-11.pdf. It is on the basis of this evidence that the call is being made for the withdrawal of the consultation document.

2. The consultation exercise follows on from a case concerning a 9 year-old boy who had been physically punished by his stepfather-to-be with a garden cane "applied with considerable force on more than one occasion". A jury in England considered the punishment to be "moderate and reasonable" taking all the circumstances into account, but the European Court of Human Rights ruled that UK law had failed to protect the boy from "inhuman and degrading treatment" in contravention of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (A v UK, 1998).

3. During the spring of 2000, consultation papers were published in other parts of the UK and responses invited from the public. In December 2001, the Scottish Executive's criminal justice white paper included proposals to legislate against all physical correction of children under the age of 3 and the use of any object in the discipline of children. However, in November 2001, the government at Westminster announced that it considered that the present law was adequate to protect children from harm. It is therefore not proposing to change the law in England and Wales.

4. The consultation paper for Northern Ireland is of a very different character from the documents published in other parts of the UK. The document prepared by the Office of Law Reform is far more ideological in its tone and distinctly opposed to the use of physical correction by parents. However, it does not enter into any discussion of the consequences for children and families if the law were to forbid the use of physical correction. Neither does it consider the implications of such legislation for religious liberties.

Families First is a family advocacy group, committed to supporting parents and children in the family unit. It supports the rights and responsibilities of parents to protect and guide their children and to bring them up in a reasonable manner, according to their religious and philosophical convictions.

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