We now move to item 8 on the agenda this afternoon, which is a debate on Stage 4 of the Children (Abolition of the Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Bill. I call on the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services to move that motion, Julie Morgan.

Motion NDM7246 Julie Morgan

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales in accordance with Standing Order 26.47:

Approves the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Bill.

Motion moved.

Diolch, and opening this Stage 4 debate is a huge privilege. I believe that we should be proud that our nation has taken forward this important reform to ensure that children have the same protection from physical punishment as adults.

Like me, many in this Chamber, past and present, from different parties, and many stakeholders across many different sectors, including those who I know are here in the gallery tonight, have campaigned long and hard for this legislation over many years—decades in fact. I believe I've been campaigning for 20 years for it with many others.

So, your perseverance has helped bring Wales one step closer to affording children the right to be protected from all forms of physical punishment. And I want to thank all those organisations and all those individuals here in the Chamber, and past Members of this Assembly, for what they have done. And I would also like to thank the Children's Commissioner for Wales for her leadership on this issue, including on the international stage. And so, this shows what can be achieved when we work together, putting children's rights at the forefront.

Many people of an older generation will recall being physically punished both by parents at home and by teachers at school. But things have changed, and this Bill is not about judging the actions or decisions of parents in the past, whose parenting decisions were based on the information and social norms prevalent then. Certainly, there is more research, professional advice and psychological insight available to today's parents, helping them raise children without resorting to physical punishment.

So, the overarching aim of this Bill is to help protect children's rights. Removing the defence of reasonable punishment brings Wales in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is central to our approach to give children the best start in life, and to help them achieve their potential. It'll provide much-need clarity to parents and the professionals who work with families. It will eliminate the current potential for confusion and ambiguity in how we expect children to be treated. And front-line professionals have said repeatedly that this clarity will improve their ability to protect children living in Wales.

But, clearly, two things will be of critical importance to ensure the Bill benefits children and their families: firstly, making sure that everyone is aware that the law has changed; and, secondly, support for parents to adopt positive parenting styles. And as you know, I am absolutely committed to these important activities. Subject to the passage of the Bill through this final stage and to Royal Assent being granted, the awareness raising will begin in the spring and continue for a number of years after the law changes. And as with our parenting support provision, we will be providing parents with information in a number of different formats to suit a range of needs.

During the passage of this Bill, we gathered valuable evidence that helped to inform our thinking, not only in the development of the legislation, but also in considering its impact and implementation. A great many people have contributed their time, energy and knowledge, and I thank them sincerely. I'd like to acknowledge the help and support from the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, social services, education and health professionals, and others who have tirelessly worked with us over this Assembly term. And I thank them in advance for their ongoing support, including through our implementation groups, to ensure that this law will be implemented in the most practical and pragmatic way. And I want to particularly thank all the Welsh Government officials who have worked tirelessly on the Bill—they could not have done more.

I'm grateful to all Members who've contributed to the scrutiny of this Bill, and to Huw Irranca-Davies for his early involvement with the Bill, and to Carl Sargeant, for the role they both played in the Bill's development. And let me pay tribute to the three committees for their support and challenge. The Children, Young People and Education Committee: under Chair, Lynne Neagle, their detailed and thorough scrutiny of the Bill gave voice to many different views, including from children and young people. The committee's Stage 1 report recommendations led to Government amendments and identified areas that could be strengthened at Stages 2 and 3. One such area was providing certainty around the date the law will change, and to provide for a period of two years between Royal Assent and commencement. My Stage 2 amendment secures sufficient time for partner organisations to be ready for the change in the law and for the awareness-raising campaign. I'd like to thank Janet Finch-Saunders and Suzy Davies for a constructive discussion following Stage 2. As a result, the Bill now includes a provision strengthening the post-implementation review.

I want to reassure Members concerned about the impact of this Bill that we have already made significant progress in preparing for implementation. We have been, and will continue to work in collaboration with all key partners through our strategic implementation group, which is up and running with enthusiastic participants and associated task and finish groups. And I will continue to update the Senedd on this work.

This is a historic moment in Welsh history. Our example is already encouraging people worldwide who wish to end the physical punishment of children. I commend this Bill to the Senedd. 

Thank you. Janet Finch-Saunders. 

Diolch, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to speak in the final stage of the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Bill.

This Bill is a free vote among the Welsh Conservative group, and I'd certainly like to reassure Members that, as spokesperson, I have listened to all sides of the debate, all evidence laid before the committee, and all of the Deputy Minister’s own statements on this issue. I was pleased to see engagement throughout the Bill’s progress, as well as some compromise from the Deputy Minister at Stage 3, which led to our amendments on reporting standards being accepted as part of this Bill.

Nevertheless, from my own perspective, I remain still unconvinced that removing the defence of reasonable punishment is right or fair for Wales. As I have said throughout the Bill’s progress, we have laws and systems already in place to protect the rights of the child, and we could have considered other options to change the behaviour of parents, such as civil liability. 

With this Bill, the state is now stepping into the private lives of families, and through the involvement of the police and social services to enforce the smacking ban, this will potentially have far-reaching consequences for us all. Exposing parents to criminal liability for smacking their children should be the last resort of a Government, not the first.

It is the short-term thinking of this Government behind a long-term issue that concerns me the most. Today, this Welsh Parliament has been left the choice of passing a Bill that didn't have an in-depth costing for our public services from the start, and we now find out, from a letter that I've acquired, which is from the Chair of the Finance Committee, Llyr Gruffydd, of their concerns that since the explanatory memorandum the Bill has increased from a range of between £2.3 million and £3.7 million, to £6.2 million and £7.9 million. The revised regulatory impact assessment provides a total cost of awareness-raising activities of £2.8 million, previously in a range of £1.3 million; information on out-of-court disposal schemes, not originally costed, is now estimated to cost between £810,000 and £2.5 million; costs for staff working in a safeguarding role, who will need to familiarise themselves with new guidance, has been included—£882,000; costs of the task and finish implementation group, £620,000; and costs of the post-implementation review, £100,000. And it goes on. This is a letter that has been signed by a committee in this Assembly—

Would you take an intervention—

Yes, of course.

—given that you've referred to a letter with my name on it? In fairness to members of the committee, those figures are figures that were requested by the committee, and the Government, in sincerity, provided those figures. There is a disparity between what was initially tabled, and what subsequently was before us, but, of course, that is the whole point of having a scrutiny process. It shows that it does work, and, of course, Members today can vote for or against based on the evidence that the Government, in fairness, has brought forward. 

Thank you. 

So, here we have the passing of a Bill that didn't have an in-depth costing for public services from the start, and that doesn't give us complete confidence in how the Bill’s consequences will be communicated to parents and children, and one that doesn't give us, a devolved Parliament, any control over how its enforcement will be applied by two reserved institutions—the Crown Prosecution Service and the police.

I say again that there must be a commitment from the Government to continually place this at the forefront of parents and the public's minds. Despite the Deputy Minister’s clear commitment to have a long awareness campaign, if we are going to use the example of New Zealand as a reason to introduce the Bill, we should also heed the warning signs coming from that country.

As I mentioned last week, 13 years after their smacking ban, a survey found that almost 40 per cent of mothers would still smack their child, and 70 per cent would not report a parent if they witnessed a parent smacking their child on the backside or the hand. So, this may not even have as much of an impact as you had intended. Furthermore, there has been a decline in discipline in New Zealand, with 15 per cent of parents with young children saying they were aware of a family that had been negatively affected by the law, and 17 per cent said it had made them less confident as a parent. We cannot allow this to be repeated in Wales.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I agree entirely with the Finance Committee's concerns. And as I said during the passage of the Childcare Funding (Wales) Bill last year, this Parliament's concerns should not be continually dismissed by the Welsh Government, and we would take no more.

Deputy Minister, as I said last week, it is your duty to take the Welsh public along with you, rather than to create an atmosphere of hostility and resistance. I don't think this has been achieved yet, but I also do know you have enough votes for the Bill to pass. As I said to the former Deputy Minister for Children and Social Services last year, it is also for you to convince your own constituents that this was the right course of action to take and that you have listened to scrutiny. I don't believe that to be the case.

Will you wind up, please?

Yes. Ultimately, your constituents, our families and the voters will be the judges of that.

I will promise the Welsh public this today: my colleagues and I will be closely monitoring this situation in the years to come, and if this Bill doesn't work, if this places law-abiding parents at a disadvantage, if this places untold pressure on already overstretched social services, and if this places more children in looked-after care, we will listen to of the people of Wales, and I personally—

Can you wind up, please?

—will seek to reverse the ramifications of this dreadful legislation. Diolch yn fawr.

I rise to support this legislation today with a happy heart, and I think that the work of the campaigners, some of whom, as the Deputy Minister said, are here, has finally paid off. I think for those of us who've been fighting this battle for a very long time, this will be a happy day for us, a happy day for Welsh families, and most importantly a happy day for Welsh children.

I don't wish to detain this Chamber for a long time, Dirprwy Lywydd, but I do feel that I need to respond to some of the points that Janet Finch-Saunders has made. In my opinion, the Deputy Minister and the Welsh Government have bent over backwards to accommodate people's concerns. There are some of us here—[Interruption.] I will quite happily take an intervention from Janet Finch-Saunders, but I find it very difficult to deal with remarks made from a sedentary position. If you wish to intervene—

I appreciate that. If I could just make the point clear: we did put 11 amendments in; only two really were considered.

It is one thing, I think, to have a process of scrutiny—it is, of course, the Government's right not to accept opposition amendments. I'm surprised that Janet Finch-Saunders appears to be surprised by that.

In my opinion, the Deputy Minister has bent over backwards. So, to a certain extent, I disagree with her. I am disappointed that the children of Wales will not be protected as from tonight—that we will wait two years—but I understand why she's made that decision: she's made that decision to deal with the genuine concerns around implementation.

Janet Finch-Saunders said that this is a first resort. This is not a first resort—we've been debating this in this place for the best part of 20 years. We would have passed this legislation—

Will you take an intervention?

No, I'm sorry, Darren, I don't have time. I might in a moment.

We passed this in principle 18 years ago, so any suggestion that the Welsh Government is rushing this—. Again, I feel—I'm rather disappointed that it's taken so long. Janet Finch-Saunders again mentions the New Zealand survey, which I pointed out last week was nothing more than a survey, and it was bought and paid for by the very campaign that had campaigned against that in the first place. So, that is not research, That is not scientific legislation.

Now, I want to address those two groups of people who I think are concerned about this legalisation, and the first people I want to talk to are those who really have some genuine concerns around the implementation. And to them, I will say: it will be all right. Fifty-eight nations have done this already. This is the new normal.

It began in 1979 with Sweden. None of those countries have seen those things that people are concerned about. None of them have seen kind and caring parents demonised. None of them have seen criminal justice systems overwhelmed. It simply hasn't happened. Fifty-eight nations, Scotland most recently, and it's a matter of sorrow to me that Wales wasn't there before them.

Today we will become the fifty-ninth, but to those with genuine concerns, I say, 'Look at the experience; look at what has happened.' Essentially, what has happened is that good parenting has been promoted in those nations. In those nations where this has been in operation for a very long time—Sweden is the example—it has actually led to a de-escalation of violence in families, of serious violence in families.

So, today we move to give our children their article 19 rights, their right to be protected from violence. As we do this, I want to focus on those who oppose this legislation from the point of view of intrusion into family life. Well, you know, we intrude into family life on a regular basis. There was a time when it was lawful in this nation for a man to beat his wife with a stick so long as it was no thicker than his thumb. I do not believe that children are the property of their parents. We have a fundamental, philosophical difference here. Children do not belong to their parents. They are citizens in their own right.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child places upon us all a duty to support them in their growth and in their development. Today we as a nation will exercise that right. We will give them at last—at last—equal protection against violence under the law. I am looking forward to this and I commend this legislation to this Chamber, but more importantly to this nation.

Lynne Neagle.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, for the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this debate. This is a landmark day for children in Wales and I am really pleased that we have got here after all this time. I think it is very important to recognise the role that the Deputy Minister has played on this issue for 20 years in two different Parliaments. So, thank you, Deputy Minister, for your tremendous persistence and determination, which has played such an important part in getting us here today.

I also wanted to thank everyone who gave evidence to the Children, Young People and Education Committee: to all the parents from both sides of the debate, who shared their views courageously, thoughtfully and openly with the committee; the wide range of professionals from education, a range of health professionals, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, social services, all who told us without exception that this Bill would make it easier for them to protect children in Wales; the Youth Parliament who themselves, in an historic move, took a vote and supported this legislation—thanks to them for that; and I'd like to thank the rest of the committee and, very importantly, Llinos Madeley, our clerk, and Sian Thomas, our head of research, who had to marshal a phenomenal amount of evidence into the huge tome that became our Stage 1 report. I think we are blessed as a committee to have such brilliant support.

But, above all for the committee, this was a fundamental children's rights issue and I am absolutely delighted that, today, we will ensure that those children's rights are made a reality in Wales. Diolch yn fawr.

This debate should be about more than whether it is morally right to smack a child or whether it is good parenting ever to use physical chastisement. If it were just about that, then my view is that it is not and, for my own children, I have not smacked them and I hope to bring them up without ever physically chastising them. But that is not sufficient, that view, to vote for this legislation because there is a further step: is it right to go from one's own personal moral view about this to saying, 'That is a view that we shall use our powers here to impose on the rest of society'? I'm not convinced that we're at this point. The Deputy Minister rightly spoke about social norms, and I wouldn't want to put any emphasis on any particular poll or any particular survey, but I'm concerned that those changes in society—smacking and corporal punishment, certainly as we used to see, are not the social norms they were. But I fear that there are still too many people, too large a group of parents who take a different view of this to that which I personally take. And for that reason, I think this should remain, for now at least, an issue determined by parents, within marriages, within relationships, within families. I say that from a pragmatic more than a principled view. There may come a time when the changes in social norms are such that it may be appropriate to legislate, that something becomes so transgressive of social norms that there is legislation and there is criminalisation, but I don't believe that that time is yet, simply because there are too many loving families who still use physical chastisement because their views on the matter are different from mine. And I—

Will you take an intervention?

I will take an intervention.

Thank you. I thank you for taking the intervention. I hear what you say, but I clearly don't agree with it. Because if we went along the trajectory that you're going on, it seems to me that what you're saying is that the personal is not political, and that, then, in turn, would clearly mean that all the legislation that we've had to protect people within their families from whatever form of abuse it might be—domestic abuse, incest et cetera—would never have happened, because, if I'm understanding you quite clearly, society wasn't yet ready for the changes.

I don't think you are understanding me correctly, because I do accept that the personal can be political and I do think that some behaviours are so transgressive of social norms that there is justification for legislation and in some cases, criminalisation. I'm just saying that I'm not convinced that our society is yet there in respect of this issue, because I think there are so many parents and families who are loving, good parents in other ways, who take a different view from you and me on this matter, and that really is the core point why I don't think we should legislate to make what happens to be a majority—a substantial majority—in this Chamber, in terms of personal morality or view about this issue, into the law of the land, with criminal penalties, when such a higher proportion of the population, relative to us, take a contrary view.

I've thought about this carefully and I've listened to powerful speeches made by Helen Mary and others and I compliment the Deputy Minister on how she has taken the legislation through and recognise what she has done over a long time in terms of her campaigning. I just worry for those that we potentially criminalise through this. I worry that this will be used when people talk about custody and divorce proceedings. I worry—I don't want to scaremonger, and I don't think, or at least I hope that people are not going to see children taken into care just because a parent is seen smacking them in public, but I fear that, in some cases, it will weigh in the balance and will mean that some children are taken into care who might not otherwise be, and given the woeful record of the state, as a parent, I worry that that may not be in the best interests of those children. For me, it is a matter of balance. I'm not yet convinced that the balance is such that we should pass this legislation.

Thank you. Can I now call the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services to reply to the debate? Julie Morgan.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank Members for their thoughtful and considered responses. I will just pick up a few of the points in the very brief time period I've got.

I thank Llyr for his intervention, because, as the Finance Committee acknowledge in their letter, many of the additional costs in the latest explanatory memorandum are as a result of recommendations from his committee, so we were listening to his committee. And, Janet, as far as I'm aware, no other nation has done as much to identify the potential impact or costs before legislating to prohibit physical punishment of children. Many of our near neighbours have been involved in promoting this legislation. Ireland introduced it on an amendment with no preparation at all. We have spent an extensive amount of time preparing for this legislation.

The Bill provides clarity for parents, professionals and the public, and from the commencement date, physical punishment of a child in Wales will no longer be acceptable under any circumstances. I think it's an interesting point that 58 per cent of the Welsh public already think that this is the law, and picking up on what Mark Reckless has said, 81 per cent of young parents with young children think that it is not necessary to physically punish a child. I believe that the public mood is changing. All the research that the Welsh Government has done has shown a distinct change in mood. Lynne Neagle mentioned how the Youth Parliament voted. We are moving that way and we are going with the times, but we must be sensitive, as Mark Reckless has said, to the minority who still do use physical punishment.

But, as I've said, we're going to give support to parents, we're going to give advice, we're going to give information. I don't think we could be doing more to carefully prepare, and all the agencies are working with us. We've got a major implementation group, we've got subgroups—we've got a subgroup on diversion, we've got one on parenting support—and they're working with this very enthusiastically, because this is something that many people have wanted for many years. Because they do see it as an impediment to being able to advise parents, work with parents. Those front-line professionals, the health visitors, the midwives, people who are working with parents right from the beginning, they want to be clear what they can say and, if we do this, it will make it clear. And just remember, we did talk about domestic abuse in this way a very short time ago. 

So, let's sign into Welsh law this important bit of legislation, which will help to protect the rights of our children in Wales now and in the future. Let's continue to have the courage to do the right thing by the children of this country. So, I urge all Members to support the Children (Abolition of the Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Bill and take another momentous step forward in protecting children's rights in Wales.

Thank you. In accordance with Standing Order 26.50C a recorded vote must be taken on a Stage 4 motion, and so I defer voting on the motion until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.

We have reached voting time. Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I intend to now proceed to the electronic vote. No. All right, okay.