Whilst my group would rather this Bill was rejected in its entirety, we will be supporting this amendment by Janet Finch-Saunders. The fact of the matter is: this is a bad piece of legislation. It removes the defence of reasonable punishment. Reasonable. What any of us in this Chamber would have thought was reasonable punishment is now not a defence. So, what it does is take it down to the minutiae of smacking a child, tapping a child on the hand. This is where this is a bad piece of legislation by any standards whatsoever.

We have the protection of the law and I am absolutely certain that everybody in this Chamber does care about the protection of children, but there is huge verbal abuse of our children. This doesn't in any way affect the verbal abuse of children, which is far more psychologically damaging than a small tap on the hand.