 Welcome to the fifth meeting of the Qualities and Human Rights Committee for 2019. As to everyone ensures that mobile devices are switched to silent. Welcome to our panel, John Finnie, with Mr Zone Daddyy, Gordon Lindhurst and meI joining us today. Agenda item one is Children Equal Protection from Assault Scotland Bill engagement to smooth arrangements to provide that effect. The committee undertook a number of engagement visits. Now I am going to ask members to feedback briefly on the visits that they've attended gyda nhw y tro gynnwysol i gyddoi i ni feddwl i Gwilam, Ffulton, McGregor, Anghiol Ross i ddadd Rok i ddweud yn deall. Gwybodaeth mewn cyddeithas. Mae hi yn gweithio gweithio couldaidd hwn o twfrangol i ddadd Rok i ni i ar hunain gyfo mwy angen ymlaen. Felly, mae'n gwneud i ddatblygonau i ddadd ar gyfer maesol i ddweud i ddweud i ddwy flyf, i ddweud i graddol o schudiau i dddeithasol, oedd ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud, That had to me as a weekly music session for children aged 7 to 16 and for their parents and carers. It was a very good discussion. It was very open. I think that as you would imagine, with a diverse group there was a mix of views, my general feeling was, at a couple of points, won a general support with principles of this bill, but I have a bit of concern around how it might impact on family life, I think that the people who spoke to us were maybe just looking for that wee bit of reassurance that folk weren't going to unnecessarily find themselves full of the law and when we spoke to them about what the principles of the bill were, they seemed to be quite reassured with that but a general support for the principles of not using physical justice isn't it? Okay. Is that a good visit? Thank you very much. I visited Midlothian Sure Start's grandparents group and had a very nice morning with the grandparents and their children there. Alex, do you want to speak back something on that? Yes, thank you, convener. Thoroughly enjoyed our morning with the grandparents in Dalkeith, particularly enhanced by the birthday cake that we received. It was a really interesting discussion actually, I think that it was fair to say that all of the grandparents understood what was being proposed here, that they were well cited on that, largely supportive as well, despite, I think, misapprehensions I might have had going in. We were interested to hear of the journey that some grandparents have been on and I think there was a view that perhaps they had initially resisted change but over the years the more they'd seen about children's rights and about the international perspective had been persuaded otherwise. That wasn't universally held. There were a couple of voices still very much opposed to the suggestion that we changed the law in this way. I'd like to put on record my thanks to the Sure Start staff and, indeed, the grandparents who entertained us and made us feel so very welcome. Absolutely. Thank you. Mary and Annie were at a messy church in Pollock Shields. Mary, can you... I know that's been... Oh, sorry, Annie. Can you feed back on that? Thanks, convener. Yes. Myself and Mary Fee were at the messy church in Moss Park on Monday night and again we joined the group for evening meal and birthday cake as well and it was my birthday the day before so this thing happened to me, so thank you very much. No, I mean it was a really interesting discussion and it was parents and grandparents there and carers. They were probably mixed views on the bill but probably erring on the side of they didn't support the bill. They thought that there was already common law that dealt with assault and they thought there should be more explanation around assault and especially the wording on the top of the bill they found it wasn't reflective of what they were trying to achieve and they spoke as well about restraint as well of children and how would that affect if they had to restraint a child or grab a child from running so they felt the bill would maybe put more pressure on them not to actually physically touch children so that was a where we were but again they were very open and the discussion was flowing and they weren't that supportive of the bill. Okay. Thank you very much. The committee is committed to hearing the views of children and on consideration we didn't feel that formal evidence sessions in the Parliament were the best way to do that. We worked with a local YMCA group to hear the views of children and young people in a more child friendly setting. That visit took place on the 26th of February, Oliver Mundell and I attended. We're also going to be meeting with children and young people on Sky and the findings from all these visits will be reflected in our stage 1 report. Oliver, do you want to speak to our visit to the YMCA? Thank you, convener. It was an excellent visit to the YMCA youth group in Kirkcaldy, but again we heard mixed views on the bill, some very sophisticated views on some very passionate advocates on both sides. We saw the young people undertake a work-through drama scenario that they designed. We saw a young child trying to cross the road, so it was a similar example to what had come up possibly on one of the committee's other visits, but the young people themselves worked through what they thought could be done to prevent it, but there was certainly a group of young people in that group who felt that it was appropriate to use physical force in that particular scenario. However, I thought that it showed how important it is to hear from young people, and I'm certainly interested in looking more at that as we go through our consideration. Agenda item 2 is Children's Equal Protection from Assault Scotland Bill, and it's our oral evidence session. I'd like to welcome panel 1. Professor Jane Callaghan, director, child wellbeing and protection at the University of Stirling, Dr Anja Heilman, lead author, equally protected report, and Diego Keros, policy officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission. You're all very welcome this morning. I'd like to kick things off by asking each of you if you support the bill's aim to help bring an end to the physical punishment of children. Jane Callaghan. Thank you. Yes, I do. I think that it's longer overdue that we end the justification of reasonable justizement and the balance of evidence in psychological research and in research on domestic abuse and other forms of family violence suggests that this is the right choice. Thank you. Yes, so my co-authors and myself very much are in support of this proposed legislation. What our report on the evidence around physical punishment has shown very clearly is that physical punishment has the potential to cause harm to children, that it is not effective as a parenting strategy, so it tends to increase problem behaviour and also socio-emotional difficulties in children, and it also carries the risk of injuries, abuse. So my co-authors and I very much welcome this bill. We think it's a very important bill, and indeed to end the physical punishment of children was our number one recommendation that we have made in the report. So we very much support the bill. Thank you. I should say you don't have to press the buttons. They come on for you. Good morning and thank you for the invitation. The defensor justifies assault and should be removed from Scott's law. Therefore, the commission supports the bill, both national and international. The commission's right body has repeatedly called for an end of corporal punishment. Two days ago I was in Geneva talking to the CEDAW committee and again they repeated that call to the United Kingdom and Scotland. So I think it's very important and I think the committee is familiar with all these treaty bodies and the call for ending corporal punishment of children at home. So I will not expand on that point now. But there is international consensus also in Europe and of the unacceptability of corporal punishment on children which is supported from broad evidence of scientific and medical evidence which the panel is more suited to respond to this point and I will come back to the human rights issues when you feel that I should. Okay. Thank you. We'll move to questions now from the committee. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. Thanks very much for coming to see us today. We've had a great deal of evidence in advance of the stage 1 consideration of this bill. Obviously that has been mixed both for and against. Those who have offered evidence against have often cited a perceived tension between the rights of children and the rights of parents, or the right to family life if you were. This committee is well versed in the international community's interventions in this country around things like the concluding observations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child which consistently suggests that we need to end physical punishment of children. That's well documented in international treaties. Is there a commensurate clause within international law in terms of the rights of parents to parent their children or the right to family life which you would see as clashing with that right of children not to be physically punished? But simply, is there a right within any international convention which gives parents the right to physically punish their children? I think for us it's quite clear that the measure in the bill is not aimed at criminalising parents or interfering with family life. But it's set in a clear standard of caregiving and redefining what is acceptable in terms of how we treat our children in Scotland. So I don't think that we should be concerned. There should not be any concern in safeguarding children's dignity and physical integrity in encouraging positive discipline and education of children through non-violent means. It's the duty of the governments and public bodies as well to take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical and mental violence. This has been reinforced and I get to your point now. This has been reinforced by the European Court of Justice and by several bodies as you mentioned of the UN. So we have a case, a Swedish case, a German case and a Dutch case where the European Court of Human Rights has said that the right to family life is not interfered by protecting the child from corporate punishment because it will clearly interfere with the child's right to dignity. So there are several cases around this that support the prohibition and support the idea or rebut the idea that that measure will interfere with the family life and right that the parents discipline the child. So that tension is a false perspective. There is no clause in international treaties which say that parents should have the right to physically punish their children? Yes, of course, Camila. I just welcome Dr Stuart Wheaton. Dr Wheaton is an opening question. We asked other panel members if they supported the bill's aim to bring an end to the physical punishment of children. I wonder if you would wish to. Yes, I think this is a tragic, depressing bill and yet another one which appears to represent the aloof, elitist nature of politics and professional life that treats parents in a very patronising and degraded way uses all sorts of weird legalistic talk about violence equating children with adults that makes no sense at all to ordinary people and criminalises parents despite, again, people trying to claim that it doesn't. People talk about all the evidence, proves that any level of smacking to children damages them as absolutely untrue and the opposite of the truth. I presume that I am just wasting my time because this bill has already passed. For the benefit of Dr Wheaton, before you came in, I asked the rest of the panel that I mentioned the fact that we had received a great deal of evidence in advance of stage 1 of this bill, all of it mixed. Obviously, there were two sides to that evidence, but those who offered evidence against the bill suggested that there was a tension between children's rights and parents' rights and I wanted to unpack that with the panel and ascertain. We are very well versed in international treaties and conventions, the right for children not to be physically punished is enshrined, but if I want to know if that tension is real and is there a conflicting right within international treaties which allows parents the right to physically punish their children. Dr Heimann, sorry, Halman. My area is not international law, but I am not aware of any such treaty, but obviously the UK has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is very clear about this issue and there is no ambiguity so they have repeatedly stated that all physical punishment and all its forms should be prohibited by law. Dr Weighton, would you like to... I do not accept the concepts, I do not accept the people that are defining their concepts. The idea of children's rights is a bit of a nonsense concept. Children do not have rights, they do not have the same framework of rights as adults. They have protections and essentially when we talk about children's rights what we are really talking about is the right of professionals to make decisions on their behalf. So it is a confused concept, it goes against the framework of how we have historically thought about rights in terms of freedoms. So it is a problem and the problem that we have with this bill is essentially a question of autonomy. You are undermining the autonomy of loving parents to decide how to raise their children with a sense of privacy and also a sense of support from society and in the process you are degrading something which is done as a form of discipline that should not be understood as a form of violence and parents should be supported rather than undermined. So for me this is a question of autonomy and I think you have to question the whole framework of how we think about children's rights. Before I bring in Professor Callahan there can I just ask Dr Weighton, that defence of autonomy used to apply to the physical punishment of women by their husbands would you suggest that that should be brought back? No because I don't look at adults and children as the same unlike the people who are supporting this bill who seem to look at adults and children the same and therefore degrade or confuse actions so people here who defend the idea that adults and children should be treated the same in terms of violence I assume see a smacking a child and smacking a woman is the same thing which I think is degrading to women because they are not the same thing adults and children are very different we would not expect to ground our partners refuse to let them leave the house that would be seen as a criminal offence whereas we ground our children or perhaps in a few years time you will be making that criminal as well. Professor Callahan Having done hundreds of interviews with children who have experienced domestic abuse I would have to say that I can't agree that children are a different order of human being from adults and I can't agree that they don't have personhood that they don't have a capacity to reflect on their experiences and that they aren't harmed by those experiences In terms of the idea of the loving parent defence unfortunately there is reasonable international evidence that suggests, for instance a study by Jing and Wang that suggested that actually the loving parent defence doesn't really function particularly well and that children experience the same level of harm as a consequence of domestic, sorry, as a consequence of smacking by parents regardless of whether it's loving or motivated positively or not Unfortunately I also can't agree that the balance of evidence does anything other than indicate that capital punishment has no sorry, I keep using the wrong words Corporal punishment has no positive consequences and has plenty of negative consequences in terms of mental health outcomes in terms of exposure to risk of future physical harm and in terms of difficulties around issues like attainment so there's evidence for instance that children who have experienced corporal punishment at home are actually disengaged more likely to be disengaged from school and more likely to experience educational difficulties Thank you You mentioned violence and the impact of harm We've also had a lot of evidence both for and against around this and recognise that there is a spectrum of physical punishment Professor, forgive me if I pronounce this name wrong Lazarelle from America is obviously a very outspoken critic of changes to the law such as this and talks about the fact that backup smacking as he refers to it can be a very effective tool of parenting when other parenting techniques fall down Are all parents capable of deploying physical punishment in that way? Or is there a point where parents perhaps lose control and that no longer becomes a reasonable sanction or a useful effective tool? I think again the balance of evidence suggests that that there is a strong correlation between parents who are willing to use smacking or do use smacking and parents who are likely to lose control in their disciplinary practices Again, I can't agree with that premise and I don't think it's borne out particularly well by the international evidence base Dr Weighton, I see you shaking your head there Well, it seems fairly clear to me that there's what you call advocacy research which is people who've already made their minds up and then this research where you're actually trying to look at it and as far as I can tell Robert Lazarelle actually tries to look at it he talks about there's been nine studies that look at the overview of all the research seven of which do not come to the conclusion that smacking is harmful for children particularly as you say backup smacking and actually the conclusion that backup smacking which is something where it's not used as a first resort it's not used as the only resort actually ends up being the best form of discipline generally speaking you don't smack but occasionally you might so the idea that there is proof there is evidence and all the rest of it that's a light form of smacking damages children it's just not borne out and I would just plead to your common sense that if you think doing that to a small child is a form of violence that harms them then you are living on another planet so in response to that I attended a conference in 2007 on physical punishment of children it was addressed by John Carnican who at that time as a senior police officer was head of the Strathclyde violence reduction unit he was there because he saw an empirical correlation between the use of physical punishment in the home and violence on the streets because in his words that any form of violence in the home used as a tool of sanction or in anger legitimised that as a tool of sanction or in anger between children and their peers as they grew up do you recognise that violence begets violence in that nature, in that case? well I don't even accept that that done to a 3, 4, 5 year old child should be understood as violence I think it's completely confused I don't know, ask my daughter she's over there I smacked her occasionally as a child have you been violent recently are you going to beget violence? John Carnican is really scientific you just have to be honest with yourself do you think doing that to 3, 4, 5 year old child begets violence, right? if you think it does you really are in another planet and I'd like you please if you are politicians why don't you try and persuade the public 75% of people do not think they should be a criminal why don't you try and persuade them instead of beating them this is your doing the equivalent of what you're trying to ban stop beating parents by criminalising go out and they have public meetings bring your professors who can say to them oh if you do that to your child that's a form of violence that begets violence and see what the public think of you you are meant to be their representatives after all are you not? Dr Wheaton I know you were a little late to the committee we actually spent some time at the beginning about how we'd gone out and spoke to parents groups grandparents groups so the committee's very well aware of our responsibilities to the public and our constituents I'll just assume you're not listening to them then I don't think that's entirely fair Dr Wheaton and can I address Do you accept that the majority of your parents would not support the criminalisation of parents? I'm going to pause this for a second I know that everyone cares deeply about this issue but we're going to run this committee in the normal manner by speaking through the chair and letting folk answer so if everyone could just Dr Wheaton you describe physical chastisement as that let's slap on the wrist in 2003 the last time this Parliament legislated in this area we brought down restrictions on physical punishment those restrictions were no shaking no headshots and no use of implements that's it that is the sole limit of physical punishment in this country so anything below the neck anything even perhaps to the point of pain and harm is legitimate so where do you get the suggestion that that is the sum total of the physical punishment that goes on in homes in Scotland? Well it wouldn't necessarily be the sum total but you would be criminalising that and as far as I understand it reasonable chastisement is still there and if you are unreasonable you can take the code for that you can be challenged for being unreasonable and I think there's lots of people who would think if they saw a child being strongly beaten by their parent they would think that was unreasonable and they would challenge that so perhaps if you want to reword it to something else then you could maybe go back and think about that but at the minute you will be criminalising somebody who smacks a child on the bottom or smacks their hand that is what you will be doing but there are many parents in this room all of whom can attest to the feeling of losing control when disciplining their children whether that's the time out or shouting or even some people in this room may be smacking as well and I would suggest to you so that I would ask you do you think that every family in this country who uses physical punishment always retains an element of control when they are deploying that physical punishment? No No do I think you would be helping that family by arresting them? Can I bring in there's quite a few questions we've asked since we came back to you guys do you want to come in on that Dr Halman? I would like very much to reply to that so firstly I very much reject the notion that what we have done for example in our review is advocacy research so what we have done is we have done a systematic search of the literature that has fit our inclusion criteria and on the impact on children we have included only those studies that looked at that prospectively so that followed the same children over time so had measures at least at two time points which is important because then you can be sure that the physical punishment has occurred before you have measured the outcome and also most of those studies have adjusted for the initial level of problem behaviour to rule out or to minimise the risk that there is reverse causation what is going on and the overwhelming majority of the studies for example on problem behaviour and aggression have found that those children that were subjected to physical punishment had an increased risk of problem behaviour down the line so it doesn't work it makes that problem behaviour worse and also we found there were studies that have looked at several time points on how physical punishment and difficult behaviour reinforce each other and what seems to be the case is that the physical punishment makes that behaviour worse and that worse behaviour then elicits harsher physical punishment and so you end up with a vicious cycle and on the issue of the relationship between physical punishment and abuse that was also one of the questions that we looked at and over the time frame we looked at we had six individual studies on that link and one review and all of them all of them found consistently that there is a link between physical punishment and abuse and I think it also makes intuitive sense that probably people are not starting out by abusing their child but that probably they are starting out by trying to punish their child but that might then escalate into something that is abuse and I think I would like to ask Dr Whedon whether he would accept that there is any Doctor Herman, the committee members will ask the questions thank you and finally Diego yeah I just finally chucking some of the arguments made before about children not having rights and being subject to having inherent rights and being treated as property or as wives were treated a century ago or as slaves even yeah that's quite appalling the second Doctor Whitman sorry if I can just pause you can I pause everyone for a second I think this is a really important topic to be taken into conversations across the table Doctor Whitman children should not be afforded less protection because of the state of vulnerability due to their mental and physical immaturity as we know but more protection so they need more so to afford them more protection or at least equal protection is what the state has the duty to do otherwise it will violate the very principle of equality before the law and the second or third point is that this mechanism is not only about ill treatment but has an impact on other rights and the long term impact on health is another and the development of the child but also in the understanding of the child of the world and the message that we want to say sent as a society in Scotland so a member of the panel brought the example of his child last night I asked my child why is she six years old and I asked her why the parliament should prohibit hitting or smacking you and she didn't talk about her and she said it's because she said because it's bad and she said what you mean by it's bad is because that means that if you hit me I can go and I can hit another people so it sends the wrong message that was her point so I think I'm still mesmerised by the simplicity and the accuracy of children thinking that sometimes we adults don't have that ability or we lose that ability when we grow up and the final point is that the European Court of Human Rights already revisited and has discussed this approach and in the case of Winston versus Germany quite recently and they found that the German government have no violated the applicant's right to respect for their private and family life in Article 8 which is Christian religious community that the children were removed from their parental authority and the care because the children were came and there was a common practice there and actually the court said that the German government found a fair balance between the interests of the parents and the best interests of the child which should be primary and the right to communicate and promote the religious convictions and bringing up the children all those together should not expose the children to dangerous practices or to physical or physical harm and the court additional declared that it was commendable for states to prohibit in law all forms of corporate punishment on children in order to avoid any risk or ill treatment I'm going to bring in some other members now Oliver Mundell Thank you, convener I wondered if the panel were able to say whether or not they ever thought it was acceptable to use physical force to regulate or manage behaviour But managing behaviour I don't think it's acceptable so I don't know whether you are talking about restrained if you need to make sure that a child doesn't come to harm but in terms of inflicting pain to manage behaviour I think that is unacceptable I'm sorry Did you say that you agree? Yeah, I agree Excellent and then following on from that do you think it's ever acceptable to restrict the rights of a child in order to regulate or manage behaviour? I don't know the freedoms I enjoy as an adult to choose what I want to do Do you think it's acceptable for a parent to interfere in a child's right to choose what they want to do? Yes, depending on the circumstances I mean So you recognise then that a child wouldn't always have the same rights as an adult? Yes And that's the same for all panel members? Yes, I would want to distinguish those two conditions quite substantially because there isn't evidence that restraint causes negative health or other developmental outcomes whereas there is evidence that hitting a child has those effects so they are quite substantially different so the question of rights for me is slightly separate here from the question of consequences I would dispute that and I'd suggest if you look at the again at Mr Lazelia's work in terms of all the review of all of this then that does not bear out and I would like to ask how you can differentiate between the upset that a child feels from being grounded for a week for example compared to having their bottom or hand smacked because I cannot see how in the future if you're going to be logically consistent eventually say that that should be banned as well because the level of vulnerability that you understand children to have is so high and their lack of resilience is so profound that I can't see how this can't eventually in five, ten years time end up being problematising almost any form of discipline whatsoever and I would like to raise a question this question is just a final thing on children's rights You're not here to ask questions I'm sorry to be direct with you but they're not really questions they're obviously rhetorical All of our two you wish to pursue Do you ever see a circumstance in which it might be in a child's best interest to be physically punished and just going to your previous question Of course discipline is important but it's a non-violent form of discipline what should be applied and and there is no quite a lot of distinction between adults and children in terms of that punishment or discipline that you're speaking of because adults are also constantly restricted and so on how they discipline as well so I don't accept the principle of that question and that's why we have a criminal justice system and we have prisons and punishment as the same rehabilitation is a very important part of that So in that case do you think that parents are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of their children? Yes So who's responsible for my safety and wellbeing I'm over the age of 18 who's responsible for my safety and wellbeing Do you appear to be blurring the boundaries around protection from harm and other kinds of children's rights there and I'm not sure that it's defensible logically Well I'm trying to draw what I think is a nuanced point around where this legislation could go wrong for example where parents have to physically restrain their children for their own safety we saw an example of that work through by children themselves in Cercodi this week a YMCA group where they had a young child running across the road repeatedly to try and get to a Mr Whippy ice cream van and in that particular circumstance children thought it maybe wasn't the best thing to do to hit the child but they could see in order to prevent that incident from happening that it would be better to be smacked than to be hit by a car I'm thinking of parents who have to manage very difficult behaviour in their children it might be better than letting that behaviour escalate and that's what I've heard certainly from at least some children it's what I hear from some families families I have to deal with in my constituency work so by asking these questions I'm just trying to draw out a distinction between certain uses of physical force and a use of physical punishment but I didn't come in with a preconceived view I'm not sure I'm not sure why it would be necessary to hit a child in that circumstance but can you understand why it might come about I can understand why it can come about but I don't really see how it's a defence for hitting a child holding a child back certainly but hitting a child how will that stop them from running in front of a car it's not a logical consequence of the child running in front of the car the two things are not connected I think that there is an argument around the use of physical restraint if necessary but I don't see how that equates to being smacked You can understand why people might see that as a response in a situation where a child's safety where they perceive a child's safety to be at risk or they feel under pressure I can understand why they might feel that way but I don't think that their view is justified So you think they deserve to be criminalised for that decision I think again there's a degree of artificiality in the way that this notion of criminalisation is playing out It's not artificial if you're in court facing those difficult questions But realistically how likely is it that we have all sorts of things around child abuse that don't result in people being in court There are nuanced levels of response Professor Cullen Nice to be free-flowing Can we just... I have a final question on this Do you think then that it's positive for families to interact with the criminal justice system when these sort of difficulties arise? Do you see you talked before about the damage that physical punishment does to children Do you recognise there's also a damage of being involved with the criminal justice system? I think it depends how you want to see the role of the criminal justice system and also what the consequences of that involvement might be So for instance it's been evidence that supporting parents who are struggling through access to positive parenting and to particularly empowerment-oriented interventions can be a useful way of helping them to find other ways of managing their children So if interaction with the criminal justice system produces that then yes, I can see that positive If it results in them going to prison or having a fine, no, I don't think that's positive I think it's not necessarily about the act of criminalising child abuse I think it's more about the realities of the way that we manage that and we do that in a nuanced way across the child protection system It isn't simply the case that we will necessarily produce the outcome of a police officer coming and taking you to court It's much more subtle than that I guess I'll just go back and say in the context of our criminal justice system as it exists at the moment where families do end up having to use the current defence in court Do you think that's a positive experience for those families going through that process? Well I don't think it's a positive experience for anybody to go to court and have to defend their behaviours but there can be positive consequences of those things Thank you Question Because people who are against smacking think that they're progressive and they don't like the idea that they are criminalising people but can we just clarify that we make something criminal and therefore smacking your child will be a criminal offence every single parent might not end up being locked up for five years but we will and Professor Callaghan is supporting the criminalisation of smacking so you are supporting that child who is being smacked on the bottom because they're going to run across the road by that parent and supporting that becoming a crime Thank you I think we're all clear on what we're doing here Doctor Can I also say something to that so physical punishment is now bent in 54 countries around the world and within the European Union the UK is the outlier so the UK is one of only three countries where there is no attention or where it hasn't been bent or no legislation has been brought forward yet and I think that argument of criminalisation just holds less and less the more countries do legislate and the more we see that there is no evidence that that leads to an increase in prosecutions because obviously police has discretion that they use and that they will use and that has been looked at in New Zealand and I think also in Ireland there is at least anecdotal evidence that it has not led to an increase in prosecutions of parents Thank you Mary Fee A number of areas that I wanted to ask questions on have already been covered but can I perhaps just pick up on the point that's just been made about an outlier in introducing this legislation I wonder if the panel could comment on why they think that is If you want to speculate I don't have an answer to that I don't think that it's entrenched ideas but what we like to say is contrite to that we are there's not the majority of individuals who are pro pro smacking but the contrary we are only one of the three countries in Europe that have still these defences justifiable assault or the naming and different jurisdiction Northern Ireland and England with Belgium France and Czech Republic which anecdotally the German family that I talked about their religious community after that moved to Czech Republic because they were allowed to hit the children in Czech Republic so good that we are not so close to Germany I wonder if I could perhaps ask the panel about restraint and it was touched on in the questions that Oliver Mundell asked but my specific question comes from restraint and it's used in a residential care setting I suppose it might be helpful to give a background before I became a Member of Parliament I was a local authority councillor and I was on an adoption and fostering panel and I visited all of the residential care homes in my council area and I saw restraint being used on more than one occasion and the first time that I saw restraint being used on a young person I found it quite frankly shocking and horrifying the level of restraint that was used on a young person and I understand that restraint particularly in residential care settings is used as a last resort but I'd be interested on the panel's views on whether this bill would be an appropriate place to perhaps deal with the issue of restraint in care settings because there is a very fine line between restraint and restraint that causes harm and a number of young people that are in residential care have come from very traumatic damaged backgrounds and perhaps have been subjected to violence before they have been moved into care and I wonder what message restraining them gives them so I'd be interested in the panel's views on restraint Clarity, do you mean a physical restraint in terms of embodied physical constraint or do you mean like being closed in a room or... I mean physical because the first time I saw I witnessed a child of perhaps 13 or 14 being physically held on the ground by three adults and a few on that they wish to share Nope Would find it difficult to answer that because I'm speaking about my review and that wasn't part of the evidence that we looked at so we really looked at physical punishment so I don't feel qualified to answer that I suppose you could expand it slightly and say that not necessarily or not solely in residential care settings but there are young people who have quite significant behavioural problems who are cared for and looked after by their parents at home and there may be occasions when those young people are out with parents that the question of potentially restraining them would come into play Sorry just before you come in I wonder if this is maybe the second panel maybe better place to comment on this we should maybe OK Happy to do that Do you have anything further on this? No I'll bring in Fulton MacGregor My own view from now says I agree with the principles of this bill but obviously we take evidence to hear the different views but one thing that does kind of strike me as I think it's an important point in the Scottish Parliament and for the country as a whole and if we go back a couple of generations people here would have been quite familiar with the term I certainly was growing up that kids should be seen and not heard and I think thankfully we've moved on from that situation but I wonder if some of the debate around just now is touching on that as well and there would have been very strong advocates at the time generation but no longer here but my grandparents for example would have been very strong advocates of that and I loved them both dearly I should say but would have been very strong advocates of that line at the time but I do think that there is a point here that Professor Whitten brought up about taking the public with us and certainly in the experience I've had with the outreach at Dad's Rock and in discussions I've had with parents and other people who generally feel there is a mood to move nobody that I've spoken to wants to be seen as somebody who smacks their parents smacks their children but I do think that the issue is around the criminalisation aspect if they were to give a slight smack for example would they be criminalised and what I wanted to ask the panel and I do understand that it might not be the best panel, it might be more for the criminal justice agencies when we get them in but how would things differ from they are just now and I worked in child protection for eight years as a social worker as well how would things differ from just now if say for example just to give a concrete everyday example a child goes to school, tells the school my dad smacked me the school then report to social work social work and investigate that how will things change with this bill being implemented from where it is just now that's one of my concerns I mean I assume that police are not going to run around arresting everyone for smacking their children although that is a possibility and the police have even mentioned themselves well what are they meant to do if this is brought to their attention what are social work meant to do when this is brought to their attention what is a teacher meant to do when this is brought to their attention well once it's made criminal use your judgement you can't understand the circumstances you can't recognise whatever was happening in terms of why or anything else you would have to have some level of intervention and more the point is I think that now parents will know that they have to be frightened of their children talking to teachers which I think is developing anyway where again we become even more separate from professionals and ordinary people who become nervous and frightened of things that happen in the house are going to be reported and possibly end up in some form of investigation so I would like to interject here because the current guidelines and procedures as it stands just now is if an allegation is made or if it's brought to attention as you describe it then action has to already be taken so I suppose where I'm getting at and I've already said from an outset that I know that the criminal justice agencies will be better placed answered but I'm interested to hear the panel's responses so already a process would kick in and what I'm interested in is if the panel think that the police or the criminal justice agencies would make other decisions now based on oh well that defends that that person had a reasonable justisement is now away I mean I have to say in the years that I worked in social work I never came across any joint procedure with the police where they took that into account they took into account the circumstances is they wouldn't in any case and if a case had to be prosecuted they would and that would be based on a very common sense approach in everything else I'm wondering what the panel thinking about that I think the important issue here is that the the police to what is okay and what is not okay and then the social worker or the police officer can start the conversation at a different point that physical punishment is not acceptable and then you can find different ways and I don't think that that means that any trivial physical punishment would be prosecuted but you have a different conversation and actually what I would also like to say to that is that we also looked at the introduction of a ban on physical punishment in different countries and how that affected the prevalence of physical punishment and attitudes in those countries and there is a systematic review of legislation in 24 countries and that found that there is a decline in the prevalence of physical punishment in most countries anyway but where you have that legislation it declines faster and so public attitudes will be influenced by this legislation and in most of those countries the legislation was introduced why a majority of parents were still against that ban but you bring the public with you with those bans and other really good explanations of how that can work is a smoking legislation where now attitudes also shift because we have changed what is acceptable and what should be the norm so I think it has very much a symbolic value that kind of ban and that kind of legislation I think there is an important distinction that we are not criminalising a conduct what we are doing is to remove a defence to treat children equally than other groups so that's quite an important significant difference so we are not criminalising any conduct now and of course there is a difference between restraint and restraint for medical reasons that physical punishment or delivery of the causing suffering to a person either by physically doing so or humiliating that person so there are differences in terms of conduct and the third point is and that's why guidance should be paramount and guidance and advice I am a parent as many of you and I think it's one of the most beautiful and challenging things that you can do in life so guidance I certainly will welcome any guidance to improve my parenting and to just for the benefit of that child in society so it's something that I don't find at all the argument of patronising when it's provided with some scientific evidence base and I wouldn't find any guidance patronising in that respect You had a supplementary Thank you convener one of the questions we were asked when we did our outreach engagement this week was that this bill will criminalise parents who love their children and children who abuse and assault their children will continue to do that behind closed doors Do you agree with that? My concerns is the confusion again we seem to have so we accept we're criminalising and then we say we'll kind of be sensible and if there's trivial as you said, trivial physical punishment I don't think we talk about trivial physical punishment if we were talking about domestic violence to a woman but when we're talking about children we say well if it's just trivial and what's different so we do appear to be treating children and adults differently so at least can we accept that because this is one of the arguments that we treat differently I come back to the point about is it legitimate to use the law to change attitudes this seems to be increasingly the case I'm a criminologist I'm trying to write a book at the minute about this type of issue and it does seem to be increasingly the case in the last 20 years that more and more and more laws are used for more and more things when they talk about we're trying to change people's behaviour as far as I understand parliamentarians are meant to be representatives of people and to some extent not like the teachers Mary is looking puzzled I'll try to answer previous questions in the previous discussion I'm not sure if perhaps I've misunderstood you or you've misunderstood me but the point that was made at the event that I attended was that there are loving parents who will give their children a smack in the hand or a quick smack in the hand who feel they will be criminalised and the point that they made was that there are parents who regularly assault and abuse their children behind closed doors and they will continue to do that and this legislation will have no impact on that that was the point that I was trying to make It is borne out by evidence as well apparently when you look at the evidence of smacking who the laws impact on is that the parents who do light smacking now no longer use light smacking that use much heavier smacking the law has very little impact on that so yes, I suspect that's the case I also suspect that it's the case that children who are being seriously abused and battered might get lost in a sea of complaints by caring professionals who are now reporting every smacking incident Can I bring in another couple of panel members doctor? Just a couple of points the first is that the notion that we don't have a nuanced response to women who experience domestic abuse or to other ideas or other experiences of child abuse is fallacious we do have a very textured response and it's very unlikely that a police response to a woman being smacked would be the same as somebody being severely beaten so I think that that's erroneous anyway in relation to the query around degrees of abuse within the family I think one of the advantages of this legislation is it actually gives a clear message to children about the status of physical violence I think that one of the issues that we have in families where violence is used routinely is that there's a normalisation of it and it can be very difficult for children to make sense of the violence that they're experiencing but it is acceptable and what is not giving a clear message that it is never acceptable is very important it helps those children more so I would suggest and I'm not sure what evidence Dr Weighton is referring to here but you know I'm not aware of any evidence that suggests that it's the case that the abuse behind closed doors either intensifies or doesn't come to the attention of the authorities regularly in the manner that he's just suggested so I think that it can only be positive for children who experience abuse to actually make a clear message that abuse is never acceptable Okay Dr do you want to come back on that? Yes so I very much second that and in that review I just mentioned that looked at the impact of that legislation it was also found that instances of severe abuse reduced in those countries that have been implemented on physical punishment Thank you Gail Ross Thank you convener and my apologies for coming in late I am really disappointed to have missed the first part of the meeting when we're talking about concerns one of the concerns that we heard whether it's correct or not is that there might be an increased burden on public services if there are more cases coming forward possible prosecutions and obviously with a change in the law there's going to have to be an awareness raising campaign as well so how do you think that we should go about that if the bill does come to pass and do you think that there will be any additional burdens on the public services? From studies that have also compared countries where there were changes in the law and countries that have also at the same time run awareness campaigns that shows that this is much more effective to do both at the same time so it's really important obviously when you introduce legislation that you also tell people about it and that you will have to spend some resources on a campaign like that and one of our recommendations is also that parents will need support and positive parenting strategies so yes you probably also will need resources to do that but we didn't do an economic evaluation or anything so I cannot speak on how much that would be Definitely it would be an impact but of course there is a need to that goes hand in hand if the bill goes ahead and the removal of the defense has to go hand in hand with the promotion not only the awareness that the law has changed which is very important but with the promotion of positive and non-violent respectful approaches to child discipline which is important and the participation of children in the design of those approaches so there has to be a greater dissemination of all that in all places where families and children are and everything from libraries, schools so training and guidance is very important and crucial That was one of the pieces of feedback that we had from an external meeting that we went to was that a lot of parents felt that the use of physical punishment, smack and whatever you want to term it was a last resort or a frustration on the behalf of the parent you know sometimes it was nothing to do with the behaviour of the child, it was the frustration and that was something that they put forward was more positive parenting courses more support in the ability to be able to say to your child without having to actually hit them so that came across very strongly supplementary I'm just wondering if any of your research has or any of your experience has indicated how often the defence of justifiable assault has been actually used because so far and over very early stages I seem to be finding it quite difficult to establish a number That's not something we have looked at because we looked at the impact of physical punishment on children It's far as on the way it's hardly ever been used which suggests that this isn't it's not being raised in this way I mean, could I just make a point about the resources I think I think the point about the resources is it shouldn't matter if we are to take seriously the arguments that are promoting this that a smacking a child is an act of violence that we should see as the same as an act of violence against another adult like an act of violence against a woman or if we're going to equated to the treatment of slaves as it has been done the sort of attitude and action if that is what smacking a child is then we should use all resources there are to stop it of course the reality why we're asking this question scratching our head a little bit is because we don't think that most people smacking their children is that because it isn't it is not a form of violence in the way that we think of it which is why we are thinking about this a little bit differently which is why I would again suggest you think again before making this a criminal offence okay Annie Wells you've not had a chance to come in yet thank you very much convener and good morning panel I've went out and visited a church in Glasgow and having looked at the public opinion that we've seen in various polls you give panel base and comrades polls from 2017 2018 we don't have the public's support on this bill now I think as parliamentarians and as this parliament tries to do we try to represent the people that elected us to be here and that is representing public opinion so how would you suggest that we can bring the public on this journey with us and I would see that being more through education more through information about how to discipline your child because I don't believe that we should be making parents feel criminal or grandparents or carers that is my personal opinion and if you look at 74% 54% of the general public feel exactly the same so how do we bring the public on this journey with us Previously one of the key things for me is the prevention of child abuse most reasonable people excuse me, sorry can I just let you to let the panel answer any I think most reasonable people would agree that the prevention of child abuse is incredibly important I am not saying about child abuse I am not saying about smacking sorry can I just finish my thought and it will be clear how I'm answering your question the question of child abuse is so serious I think in our culture the confusion around what's justified and what's not in parenting practice feeds into it so I think if we make it clear to members of the public that what we are attempting to do is protect children I can't see how any reasonable opposition could be brocked in relation to that there was also significant resistance to the introduction of coercive control and we nonetheless went with the evidence base around that it suggests that it sustains family violence the evidence suggests that smacking sustains family violence it doesn't have a place in a civilised culture answered that question when I spoke earlier about what the evidence also shows that legislating means that the attitudes also change faster in those countries where legislation has been brought forward so by legislating you will influence social norms you will influence what comes acceptable and what is not so you will influence attitudes by introducing such legislation and in most countries it has been introduced without the majority of public support at the time it was introduced so it is the right thing to do yes you are representing people but as you said it is the right thing to do two and three you also have the obligations to take measures to protect the best interest of the child to protect the dignity of the child and so there is not only one task that you are doing as a legislator and thus sometimes it is a difficult one but you have to take the right one and within a legal context you have that obligation good question and I think the answer in part is given by the response because I think when you go to parents and essentially say when you smack your child you are on the trail towards child abuse they will look at you horror and disgust and think you are living on another planet and think that you are contemptuous of them who have many of whom will have smacked their children and loved their children and would never abuse their children and live amongst other people who do likewise and know that that is not actually the reality for the vast vast majority of people who do not abuse their children unfortunately that degraded view of people seems to be what underpins what appears on the surface to be a progressive approach to things is actually a very anti-human negative patronising and elitist outlook about ordinary parents who smack their children love their children and would never abuse their children so on okay we have Gordon Layngter this morning I believe you have a question you want to ask yes, thank you very much convener can I just say in the starting that I don't entirely agree or entirely disagree with what has been said by any of you we've got limited time so I want to perhaps address my questions Ieithio y cyhoeddfeydd arlau. Rwy'n credu i'r cyfnoddau ar gyfer oedd yn ni'r cyfrifolau i gynghwyl i'r cyfrifolau gynghwyl o'r cyfrifolau. A'r cefnoddau ar gyfer... Gweltych chi'n bwysig o'r ddweud yn y gallu ei wneud o'r dwyliadau o'r cwmdeithasol i'r cwmdeithasol i'r cyfrifolau. byddw I mean, first of all, of course, I'd have to disagree with you that this doesn't change things in terms of the criminal law that parents would face. breathing difference with a face, because, ultimately, all that's in bill as currently drafted—of course, there's the possibility of amending it at stage two—is that the defence open to parents, if charged with assorting their child, is removed, and it simply becomes the common law defence of assault. To the concerns that people have about that, because there are reasons for these 같이 the law, and I am 然後質� on that it means that it meets the legal release and so forth. Because if we look in terms of other countries, and the way they've approached itosaid that theyVE not approached it by making it a common law offence. For example, in Germany, it's part of the Criminal Code, that's set in the Criminal Code. It's defined in Sweden in New Zealand. Some of the points made for example, Dr Haimann talked about the police deciding if a prosecution proceeds. For example, in New Zealand, under the Crimes Act 1961, section 59, subsection 4, it's specifically provided that the police have the discretion, I'm quoting from the act, police have the discretion not to have matters go further. So the difficulty is, on that point, for example, in Scotland, the police do not decide if the matter goes to prosecution or not. It's the prosecution service. Looking beyond that, the approach to crimes, sorry, perhaps I'll try and summarise it. So the question is, would you consider that there are other matters that might need to be looked at if the law is changed, if we move on from the first point about the disagreement about whether or not the law should change. There are other things that need to be addressed in the law as it stands, because this is just a common law offence, and there's no statute of limitations, unlike in Germany, Sweden and New Zealand. I haven't looked at that to that extent, so I'll have to take some time and get back to you with an answer, just to be brief, because of the time I'll have to think about that. But did you say that that's something that should possibly be looked into? I agreed that it's different, because there's no codify since civil law, but are the consequences different? I don't know, I will have to look at that. We also have John Finnie MSP with us, whose bill it is. Do you wish to ask any questions or contribute? In which case can I thank all the panel members for joining us this morning and sharing their opinions with us. We will suspend for around five minutes now to let the panels change. Welcome back everybody, and I welcome our second panel this morning to give evidence on children equal protection from assault Scotland bill. We have Claire Simpson, who is the manager of parenting across Scotland. Dr Louise Hill, policy implementation lead at Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children. Amy Beth Mea, who is a member of Who Cares Scotland at Collective, and Cheryl Ann Cruickshank, director of operations at Who Cares Scotland. You are all very welcome this morning. If I could start by asking you the same opening question that I asked the first panel, do you support the bill's aims to help to bring an end to the physical punishment of children? Yes. Parenting across Scotland, we are a partnership of different children's organisations, family organisations, and the eight members of PAS are completely in agreement that it seems unfathomable to us that in the 21st century it is still defensible to hit a child. If I were to hit one of you today, I would have no defence. If I were to hit my child, although he is now beyond that age, there would be a defence for that. That does not seem right to us. Thank you. Dr Hill. It has been significant over the last decade or so for children, so we think that this is a natural next step for us. I would like to take the opportunity first of all to thank you for allowing me to be in this space today. Also, just to give you a bit of background about myself and to introduce myself, I have had social work involvement for as long as I can possibly remember as far back. I have had a lot of different placements throughout my life, so many I do not actually remember, so I cannot give you a number, I am afraid. I can tell you that the longest I have ever had has been four and a half years. The shortest has probably been about four hours, as I was placing the wrong local authority. One of the areas in this bill, although I am a big supporter of the bill, is that there is a grey area. I find that at the moment we are talking about when people are being removed, children are being removed from their family home to be placed in care, where the state then becomes parents, they become the child's corporate parent. Suddenly, it is okay for them to be restraining young people and to be acting in almost an assault-like manner and breaching human rights. On the other hand, we are wanting to take away being able to smack children, which we should be encouraging. We should be putting this bill in place. However, there is a whole grey area that we have left out. I think that committee members will want to come to that later. I would like to say on behalf of Who Care Scotland that we welcome the intent within this bill and we give our full support to its aim of ending physical punishment of children by parents and carers, by abolishing the defence of reasonable chastisement. Diego talked earlier about this bill redefining what is acceptable in terms of protecting the child's right to dignity. We would like to see this redefining extended to protect the dignity of all children from physical punishment or assault, including those who are looked after. We also heard earlier that there is no international treaties supporting a parent's right to physically punishing their child. In the interest of full disclosure of trying to join in Who Care Scotland as an independent advocate in 2001, I also worked in residential childcare and I was trained in restraint. I witnessed restraint, as Mary Fee said earlier, both as a residential childcare worker and as an advocate, and hear regularly from our advocacy practitioners about their experience of witnessing restraint. It is that subject that we want to discuss with you today. I will call Hamilton. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you very much for coming today and for the evidence that you have supplied with us with already. I would like to start by touching on something that Annie Wells said in the last panel. A number of you were present to hear that and that is that there is controversy around this bill and public opinion at the present time is not in favour of the change that we are seeking to implement here. I would like to ask whether we as politicians should always follow public opinion, because I am minded that the abolition of the death penalty did not command public support at the time, but that has since changed. Should we always follow public opinion as opinion polls tell us? I suppose I would start by saying that, in my opinion, legislation ought to be evidence informed. My understanding of a representative democracy is that we represent the people in your constituencies and you represent their best interests. Given what we know and given the compelling evidence that we heard from Professor Hillman today about the harm that this causes, I think that it is entirely fitting and appropriate to meet legislation that prevents harm, that sends a clear message to parents, that tells them that the vast majority of parents want to do the best for their child. I think that quite a lot of them do not know the evidence that Professor Hillman has come up with. I do not think that many of them are going to sit and read a long evidence review, but I think that it is our duty. In the kind of information that we provide for parents, be it things like our websites, Scottish Government's parent club, health visiting, it is our duty to educate about what the best methods are and what harms. I think that if we do this, we need to do it with a good public education campaign, public information campaign, and to ensure that there is family support. Professionals in Sweden said to me that one of the things that clarity in the law offered to them was that parents would say, I know this is against the law, but I have been driven to the end of my tether and I do not know what to do. It offered opportunities for dialogue and support and I would say that that is what we need to create. I would also say that we need to make sure that we put proper resources into a public information campaign. When the smoking ban was introduced, we allocated £3 million for the first year and £1 million for each of the subsequent years. I am not advocating something on the scale of that, but I think that we do need to adequately assess what we need. We were able, as a country, to divert people from harmful behaviour in smoking. We need to do the same thing and offer proper support to parents. A thing to highlight is that children do not actually know. For example, yesterday was me just realising that a lot of the restraint that I went through was an invasion of my human rights. I did not know that until I sat down and was preparing my notes for today. The women earlier who sat where I am sat at the moment said that it is important that we do this because we need to send out a clear message to children that this is not okay. Going back to what you were saying, the public probably do not even know right now and children are not aware. How can they make that informed decision of saying that it is not okay if we are appalling them and asking them right now because they do not have the knowledge and education to then back that up? I think that it is about informing them. I think that Amy was mentioning Professor Callaghan there. She talked of normalisation of violence in this bill. It sends a clear message to children that physical abuse is never acceptable and we fully support that. Our members talk similarly about physical restraint and how it quickly became an accepted part of their experience of care despite the law being quite clear that it should only ever be used in exceptional circumstances and only if it is the only practical means of securing the child or another person's welfare. We have regularly heard from young people that restraint is used for behavioural management and to compel the child to comply. We also support the need for a public education campaign more broadly than universally around how we care for our children but also how we care for our children who are looked after by the state. I think that one of the things that is really important and symbolic about legislation like this is about how we value and respect children and young people in our society. I think that though in listening to your constituents and the public opinions on it, part of that for me is saying that for some parents and carers it is about the knowledge of what else do I do. This is the last resort. Support me then as the state or through our elected members and our local authorities. Support me to know what is a different parenting strategy. How am I supposed to know that? They have not got all the access that perhaps some of us have. I think that that is the opportunity to say that the really good work that was done in the national parenting strategy has some great ethos and values underneath it but as part of that there should be a whole campaign and awareness around different approaches that families can then have to be able to engage with and parent in different ways. Can I just pick up as well? Some of the comments earlier that were made just around carers and I think that it is just important to know that the physical punishment for children that are cared for in foster care and kinship care has not been allowed for a long time and it is actually in the 2009 regulations. Children that are growing up in foster care and formal kinship care should not have any form of corporal punishment against them. It is also a basic social work check that is done even in other placements where there is any engagement from social work that they be a knowledge of whether or not they would be aligned from social work that we would not expect any level of physical punishment of children. Just to mention when you are saying there about kinship care and foster care, my confusion and why I think that we should be abolishing it all together is where is that line? We have a child that is in foster care, myself personally, before I was then moved into residential care where suddenly it became okay to restrain me. However, restrain was never explained. I have never witnessed restraint. Until suddenly I had four people sat on top of me, one of which was a sergeant in the army, one of which was a bouncer in the night club and one was a female over six foot. But these people were sat on top of me suddenly and I had no idea what restraint was. So where is that line? Suddenly because we are no longer in foster care that we are now in restraint that it is okay to now do this. Why is that? Why are we allowing that to then happen? Okay. Thank you all for that. If I can unpack some of your answer there, Dr Hill, we heard a discussion in the previous panel about best interests and I think what you're talking about in that sort of discussion between a constituent and an MSP about what do I do then? I get to the end of my tether. How do I act and parent in the best interests of my child? There's also speaks to that tension I referred to between this or perceived tension between parents' rights and children's rights. Can you describe? It's advantageous that 54 countries have been down this road before us. In that experience, what has the state done to provide alternatives for parents? Okay. Thank you. I think what's critical is that the legislation in itself can only be ever seen as one small part. I know it doesn't feel like a small part at this stage of the debate obviously, but one part of that whole culture change in which you're trying to achieve the change. Well, not only the public awareness campaigns at the time of legislation passing, but recognising that we're becoming parents all the time, so it's an ongoing commitment to awareness campaign around it. Also, I think really investing in all the family support programmes that are required. There's obviously a lot of evidence we can talk around around different kinds of family support and different particular parenting programmes, but it's actually more about the ability I suppose to share all the different kind of support that can be for families in the sense of the great ready steady baby materials that are provided with more information in there, the clarity that can be provided. I'm very fresh to it because I've got a two-year-old and a four-year-old. So it's kind of thinking through all the kind of ways in which you kind of have access to those materials and what just becomes, I suppose, normalised. You know what becomes like through the baby box, through all the different great endeavours that we've got, and yet we still have this anomaly in our legislation that we're still accepting justifiable assault of children. So it's some great work that's been done. So it's about how we kind of build on all that in some really gentle ways and then we can also build up some more parenting programmes. It's my time. Hello. So as regards the efficacy of those approaches and how they've happened in the 54 countries that have gone before us in that, if we take the example that Oliver Mundell raised of the child running into traffic, has there been a dramatic upsurge in children running into traffic in the 54 countries that have already adopted this change? I don't think so. Sorry, but I have not done any evidence on that to show. But on that point, I suppose one of my reflections is that my response of having very small children and if they're running into traffic, my immediate response is to hold them, I get hold of my children and I keep them safe. And that's what so much of our really good guidance and policies around children, we want to hold them and care them and look after them. My immediate response to a child would not be to hit them for running over to the ice cream land. It would be to hold them and then to talk to them and to get down alongside my child and say, you know, this is why it's dangerous and sit there and point it out, not to hit them as a response of it. Clare Simpson, you were wanting to come back in. I'd like to point out, in a way, we've talked quite a bit about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. And I think quite often people see it, obviously it is about the rights of the child, but sometimes people see it in a really kind of oppositional or adversarial way as it's about the rights of the child as against families. In fact, of course, the UNCRC places the child very firmly in the context of the family and says that family is the best place for the child. And what it goes on to say is that state has a duty to provide support and help to parents in that role. And I think that the Scottish Government has talked about putting the principles of the UNCRC into law in terms of its programme for government. I think this is the first step on the way. And I found myself quite surprised in the last session to agree with one of the things that Dr Weighton said, where he said that parents should be supported and not undermined. And I see this bill as an opportunity to do that. It will provide clarity, it will send a clear message to parents about what is harmful and then we need to offer them the support, as Louisa said so much, said that we need to offer them the support to be able to do that. Mary Fee, do you wish to come in on your questions? Thank you, convener. I just wanted to follow up on the points that were made around restraint. Obviously, as I said in the earlier session, the first time I saw restraint being used I find it quite shocking. And obviously restraint is used in a residential care setting, it's also used in the secure care setting. And I am aware that it has been used on occasion in specialised schools that support young people with quite severe behavioural problems. And the explanation that I was given around restraint being used was not to discipline but it was to protect. And I would be interested particularly in the representatives from who cares on what their view on that is, whether it does actually protect. And there is a very fine line between restraint and assault. And if restraint was to be included in this bill, would we then need to look at the issue of parents who care for children who have quite significant behavioural problems and are in a public setting and may need to use some degree of restraint on the child to protect them? If you don't mind, I've got two points on this. The first being that I do a lot of work who cares Scotland and I am on the collective at the moment. So I actually done my own research and asked for to care experience people within that. What their opinions were on being restrained and whether or not they found it to be safe. So I think it's really important some of the things that I've got to say. However, there's plenty of evidence out there, so I've got some very brief quotes from some people that might just add to that. So there was, for example, we have one here, whereas it's already with me. Just trying to find it here. There was one where someone had actually said that four guys lying on top of you, if it's not done right, it doesn't help you. It only makes matters worse. You're in your room after raging to get back out there and start all over again. Sometimes they take you down wrongly and it hurts you. It also means that you can have carpet burns on your face and the staff can then use that as an excuse to say that you're self harming, but you're not. I think that's important to put that out there, that it does cause self injury. Going back to what you were saying about being in the public, there was a time where I'd actually been going to CAMHS and CAMHS had actually said to me that in times that you feel yourself getting to a point like that, where you may end up getting restrained, remove yourself from that situation, take yourself away from that and recognise that actually you're in control of your behaviour. I tried to do that and on one occasion I removed myself from the situation. I left the children's unit to be followed out the door by three members of staff who chased me down the street, pinned me down to the ground, whilst people were going by just doing their daily business. For me, that was dehumanising. There were people walking by who were witnessing me going through that. Some people actually picked up the phone to phone the very people that were looking after me, which were social services, to report that this girl was being pinned down by three people. The very people who are supposed to be providing this care, in fact, are the ones actually doing this and I think that that's something that we need to keep in our minds when we're considering this as well. That's a really powerful point, Amy. I think it's important to recognise and I'm sure Cymru are aware that the vast majority of children enter the care and protection system due to experience and abuse and neglect. The impact of this abuse can be life long and they have told us, our members have told us that to recover they need to feel safe, respected and loved. We know that both feeling safe and having at least one loving, stable relationship is crucial for children to heal from past trauma and enable them to build trust and safe and caring relationships. Restraint of children is legally permitted within residential childcare settings under the regulation of care requirements as to care services of Scotland regulations 2002. However, it should only be used if it is the only practicable means of securing the welfare of that child or another person. It's also when you're told in safely guidance that has been commissioned by government was produced in 2005 and updated in 2013. It also states within that that should be used as a last resort. There have been a number of reports and inquiries that predate the regulations that have highlighted concerns around the use of restraint, including pin down in 1992, the Kent report in 1997, the Edinburgh inquiry in 1999 and the Fife independent inquiry in 2002. Post those regulations there was also the care law inquiry in 2009. That identified inappropriate and excessive use of restraint as contributing factors within an abusive care environment that not only failed to protect the children and young people in their care but further exacerbated their trauma and exclusion. Allegations constituted a substantial list and included physical assault, some of it arising from the inappropriate use of restraint, including making children compliant through causing pain. So there is a very fine line between restraint and physical assault. Do you have any evidence that when restraint is used, it is used as a last resort? Is there an escalation to get to the point where restraint is used? Certainly, when I saw it, there appeared to be no escalation. For me, that is what I think that we are missing out of the picture. People do not just go from 0 to 100 with no time. There is a process that normally happens within that. I believe that when professionals are going on these courses to learn about restraint, they are supposed to be taught that it is a last resort. However, our evidence has shown that it has not been. Young people do not actually know why they are being restrained and who makes that call. Where is the line? There is a quote from a young person of 14 years of age who said that she was restrained for simply throwing a feathered pillow. It is a feathered pillow. What damage is she going to do with that? She is not putting anyone in any sort of immediate danger. However, what we are finding is that there is a very fine line with it and who is dictating that. Also, it is important to mention as well the threat. A lot of those young people are not just the case of the restraint itself. There is that woman threat all of the time, which is emotional abuse, in my opinion. It is a way to regulate and control behaviour. It has not been used as a last resort from my experience and from many others that we are hearing from. Just to add to Amy's point, we provide advocacy services in 30 of the 32 local authorities in Scotland. Some of those services have agreements whereby we will be notified where a child has been injured in a restraint and have an opportunity to go and talk to that child. Practising that area varies widely and there is evidence from research that we have conducted as far back as 1997 that physical restraint can sometimes be the first resort and it is not always used as a last resort and is sometimes used as behavioural management. For us, that is a huge concern and we have highlighted the impact of restraint on children and young people's emotional wellbeing in a number of reports that we have produced over the years. One of the challenges with this is that there is no nationally collected data on restraint within residential care settings. Local authorities are required to define for themselves what the appropriate training for their staff is and to also record incidents of restraint. However, we have not seen any recent evidence or research into that or the efficacy of restraint within the care setting. I am going to move us along and we can come back if there is space. I am going to ask again what asked the last panel in it. It is definitely not a trick question by any manner or means. I am just wondering if any of the panellists here are aware through their research or work in the area of how often the defence of just the viable assault is or has been used. I am not, if I am completely honest. It is there to be used. I believe that it is not often used but, having said that, a removal of the defence when we have looked at criminalisation in other countries, looking at error, it has not increased criminalisation of parents, the reports of the Minister of Social Development and Employment on the effects of legislative reform in New Zealand, which looked at it from 2007 to 2013. He said, in summary, I have not been able to find any evidence to show that parents are being subject to unnecessary state intervention for occasionally lightly smacking their children or any other unintended consequences. There were actually eight extra prosecutions in New Zealand over that time period, not the hundreds of thousands that we have been led to believe might occur. I am sorry, that does not totally answer your question. It really does, because it is the area that I am looking at in terms of this aspect of criminalising parents. I think that you have summarised it really well. I do appreciate what Gordon Lindhurst said at the end of the last panel. I think that there is a technical issue there for the bill. However, for me, did the panel not agree that this gets to what I think the number of the bill is? John Finnie can also correct me, but it is not about criminalising parents. It is about sending out a strong message that is making the law clearer to everybody. I am sitting on an implementation group that the Scottish Government has set up to look at some of the issues if the bill were to be passed and the police and the Procurator Fiscal sit on that group. Unfortunately, there have only been two meetings of the group, so I have not been in the same room at the same time. However, my understanding is that the police and the Procurator Fiscal offers, the police see that there would still be a screening mechanism and an assessment, which would happen in any case, and that sometimes that would be referred on to the Fiscal's offers and sometimes not. One of the cases, because it always seems to be the thing that people cite, is what if a child ran into the road. They said that, as Louise said, most of us, whether it be adult or child, would pull them back. However, if there were a smack, a light smack in the heat of the moment, the police said that generally that would not be considered assault, whereas if you then said to your child, right, you really, you know, as something after the events that you assaulted them, then that would. And there was a clarity and a distinction about the kind of, you know, heat of the moment and an assessment that that was not a method of physical punishment. I support Claire's points. In terms of the kind of international research, what it had indicated is there's not any increase in prosecutions as a result of the changing legislation. What there is, which we think is a huge positive, is a decrease in the use of physical punishment to children and a decrease in physical abuse. And it's all around kind of that culture change that can happen as part of it. So I understand the concerns about raising the prosecution rates, but they've certainly not been founded in any evidence so far internationally. I don't know if it's useful at this point to say something about the kind of resources question. No, I'll come later on to that. I just wanted to clarify the point that you were making there. You feel that this bill is passed, that it won't have the effect of more prosecutions for parents but will have the effect of possibly being a huge influencer on effectively taking Scotland out of the Victorian era in some of these aspects. I think so. In a way, if we look at it from a kind of bell curve kind of approach of a more kind of public health model of how we respect our children and young people that actually there could be a reduction in prosecutions as a result because of that culture change that then happens. Also around that kind of continuum that we've spoken about in terms of child abuse and neglect that actually if we start to shift our attitudes towards children and young people, if we can shift it in that direction then we could also have a reduction in prosecutions. Because parenting and the level of support that comes with it has changed and evolved. I think, you know, your question in some ways also links up to the question of public opinion and I think the public opinion often, you know, opinion pills are quite a blunt tool and quite often when you see them you start asking other questions. I think some of the public opinion is actually around the fear of criminalisation and that's a message that we have to get over that that's not the intent and it's about support rather than criminalisation. I think with parents' attitudes to smacking, if you look at things like caused parent line you find that actually there's quite a number of parents' call who have smacked and they're concerned, they regret it, they recognise it as not a useful method of behaviour management. When you look at sort of various pills like grown up in Scotland, Ipsos Murray pills that we've done, Millennium cohort studies, parents often say that yes they have, it's like the clining number and the younger group of population are more in favour of abandon smacking than the older cohort, the present parents are more in favour and less likely to use smacking. The other disparity is that people who have smacked actually say that it's not an effective method of parenting so we're not using it to achieve behaviour change, we're using it because people have lost control, I'm not sure what that teaches a child, we're using it predominantly on children who are between three and five years old and surprisingly, it always surprises me, on disabled children and I think those are the majority of children that are smacked and when we look at that, that is about communication, it's about the frustration of small children who actually can't communicate so maybe they lash out, maybe there's a frustration on their parents and they lash out back but we have to get over that, we have to find ways of communicating to parents about how to communicate with children at that stage and how to employ positive parenting strategies. We are going to come to the resources question now, you'll be glad to know. Interesting to hear that there's been no increase in prosecutions in other countries and in your opinion a good awareness campaign, which is what I'll come on to in my second question, might actually decrease the rates that we're looking at. I'm going to let you have your opinion on how much resources should we be putting into this. I think it was a reflection of looking at what resources we were putting around the smoking ban and where public opinion was on that and all the change that was needed on it and I think Claire cited the figures before that we were looking at a kind of £3 million of investment on public awareness raising, public health messaging and I think there's 20,000 in there for the public awareness that's in this and I think if you're looking at how you actually want to achieve culture change I think that that's a very very small sum and an incredibly ambitious, the aim and the aspiration I think which is in the policy memorandum that's part of this legislation I just worry that it won't have the successes that we all could hope for because it can't lead to that level of culture change without all the other parts that are required and I think that that's a thing that legislating in itself is only one part of achieving that big kind of picture so I think that that was one of my concerns. Okay, so to go on to, in fact, just one more question before I go on to the actual public awareness campaign and how that might look, would you see this money being put in at the moment as almost a preventative spend measure because if we are going to stop adults becoming maybe a chaotic lifestyles further down the road by introducing this measure it is almost preventative spend? I absolutely would be of that opinion and I think Professor Callaghan's evidence that shows of the impact, the mental health impact for children and young people into the future you know, I think that if we frame it that way this is an excellent example of preventative spend. You said, is it almost preventative spend? I think it's absolutely preventative spend. I think it's about public awareness and public information and the other thing that it absolutely has to be about is family support services You know, parenting across Scotland is actually a coalition, a partnership of charities and at the minute we are seeing budget cuts all over Scotland in family support services. At a time where there's austerity and poverty and the services are needed more than ever, the resources are less there. We have to guard against that now and we have to guard against that in the future because actually it is those support services working with families that are able to achieve the good results for children and for whole families that we need so the result has to be in public information for this bill but it has to be accompanied by family support. In some of our written evidence from the Evangelical Alliance say that investment in education would be a more proportionate way to tackle this rather than legislation. What's your opinion on that? I think you need lots of pieces of the jigsaw to achieve this. Legislations are critical. We know that legislation is important around clarity for the law and certainly with social work engagement and service provision but legislation is one part of it and actually having legislation and having parliamentarians having this debate allows us to have a national conversation around it which is needed and actually it's brave. It's great that you're doing this because it's actually been an issue that's been around for a long time and it's been it's been ducked. You know, we've not been bold enough to have the conversation and what we find is that people have all kinds of different opinions and they hold them very strongly and they hold them very personally and they want to fight for their positions which is fine that's a democracy and that's what we live in so we have that we have that debate. I feel that legislation is also shown as being one of the we would talk about the achieving culture change. It's one of the enablers. It's one of the things that allows change to happen but in itself it can achieve relatively little. I'm so sorry to say that at parliament but what it needs is all the other factors around it and that comes with your policy guidance, coaching, support services around it so in itself it can achieve some things but what it's allowing is for us to have this national conversation and that's a great thing and that will allow us to progress. I think that Elical Hamilton has a quick supplementary on this so I'll just let him come in. And you can answer both questions when I finish, Claire. So I mean, Doctor Hill, you're absolutely right. This parliament has ducked this issue several times previously. In fact the last time any legislation was passed in this area was in 2003 as I mentioned in the previous panel and that outlawed the use of headshots, implements and shaking and that was it. Do you think that that was enough and did it make it any kind of difference? I think, no I do not think it was enough but I think it was a reflection of change happens within the political climate and within the society and where we're at at the time and sometimes we need to take smaller steps and we've got people here demonstrated today on the whole continuum of beliefs and values that we have around this. So we make progress and we take small steps. I think that this bill is a really important opportunity to actually turn some of the policy rhetoric that we have around children's rights and make it real for children. It actually is a very tangible way that this Scottish Parliament can show how we value our children and young people. It's a very powerful message. So answering the two questions very short answer to your question Gail is that actually yes of course we've got to have education but legislation too. I don't see that the two are mutually exclusive and what Professor Hillman said earlier on about in various countries legislation has led the way to that change and made that education possible and change possible. In terms of Alex's question, no I don't think it was enough and what do I think it achieved or what did it do? I think it created confusion. It created confusion for families. We did a poll which I consent here and send you the data table. It's a little bit old now but given that nobody else has done it it's the most recent evidence we've got and we looked at, we asked parents what do you think the law is? Do you think it's illegal? We asked them is it illegal to hit around the head? Is it legal to use an implement and so on? A hugely confused response. I don't think that's helpful for how we live our lives and how parents feel able to negotiate the law. We need clarity. Annie Wells, Cymru. Thank you, convener. Good morning panel. It isn't just opinion polls and I know there's been some jib about opinion polls but it isn't just opinion polls that the public are communicating to us about this with. There was over 400 written submissions to the committee and the majority of the individual responses received didn't support the bill and then just having heard Claire speak about the implementation group as well where police will still have the basically using just reasonable chastisement as a case not to progress the smacking or if it was at the heat of the moment or something. I'm just wondering whether if we take that away then the police won't be able to do that. They would need to progress the complaint if we take away the reasonable chastisement bit and also do you consider that if we were to put more resource into the information and education of how parenting would actually be more of a way to change the culture of society in order for us to actually change public opinion and change people's perception? I suppose on organisational responses versus individual responses it's quite a difficult one because you don't know where the individuals are coming from or whatever but at the same time I would go back to what I said previously that I think there is quite a lot of misunderstanding both about the law as it stands and this law as it is proposed. I think there's a great fear of criminalisation and I think a lot, I haven't read all of the individual responses but I've certainly had a look through them. A lot of them refer to that criminalisation of parents. As I said before that hasn't gone up in other countries, the other countries have not been awash with prosecutions of parents and criminalisation of parents. Given that that's not, I think we need to assure parents that that's not going to happen and I think that's part of the public, part of the concerns that existed. I think it's part of a democracy isn't it and people have lots and lots of different views and take the opportunity to share them and I think that for me the message around that is to listen to that whole range of views and actually listen to what people are really saying, what actually is their anxiety under that, where does that come from? Is it for some parents the position that they go, I don't know what to do, I don't know, if I can't smack I just don't know what to do and particularly I have real concerns around and it comes into the family support side and probably another debate that we can have around supporting parents with learning disabilities and them having support at all stages to know what different strategies they can use but to be supported alongside so that they and many other parents feel in a place where smacking isn't the only option that they know or the only option that they feel that they have. So I think for me it's always kind of just trying to go deeper into that and understand what it's about but for others it will be a political opinion, it will be a state that this is the state interfering in private family life and that's always a huge tension that we have in the world of child welfare as in the role of the state, the private family life and the rub of where we come up together and that's particularly in our work around protecting children. That there's always decision making involved, we said there's not one person that makes a decision about either pursuing a criminal case in a very, very small number of cases that would be for children that experience abuse and neglect or going down other measures but that's a multi agency decision of which police would be part of those conversations. So I think it's kind of a little starker sometimes the way it's presented than what it is and certainly within that world it is about collaborative kind of decision making but principally it is about looking at the strengths of families and working with that in a way that says where are you at, what level of pressure have you got on you, what else is going on so that as a result of those things it means that perhaps your parent is not as good as it can be. Can they help you to be a better parent? That's kind of the things where it comes to. Sorry if you don't mind, this is really live and real for me right now. I'm 23, I've just had my first baby as you've probably just heard him screaming there. He's 23 weeks old on Monday in one of my fears. It still really is a big fear of mine is that the state intervened in my life, the state deemed that for whatever reason my mum wasn't fit enough to parent me due to the abuse that I was suffering in my family private life and for me I didn't want that to be an issue and I'm determined not to allow that to be an issue for my son in our life and there isn't a parenting book out there that I haven't read because of that because I'm determined not to allow that to happen. But it then means that where do we then say because at the end of the day it's all learned behaviour, what we're subjected to and what we're conditioned is it's learned repeated behaviour and we're not allowing children and young people to be able to self-regulate when we're hitting them, when we're restraining them, when we're assaulting them. That isn't allowing people to develop, it's not allowing children to develop in a society, to be good members of society because we're just forcing them, we're pinning them down and we're sitting on top of them and not allowing them to feel what they're feeling and allowing them to then make sense of what those feelings and what those emotions are and I think that's why we now just make it clear that it's not okay for these types of things rather than having a grey area of what's okay, abolish it, there's no place in a modern Scotland for smacking kids or for a restraint at all and we need to make that clear, it's fundamental that we do. Do you want to come in briefly? Thank you very much for the response. Just another quick question and it's the name of the bill as it stands just now. I had visited a church in Glasgow with Mary Fee on Monday and they were concerned about the name of the bill because under common law an attack upon one person by another is an assault whether it happens to an adult or child so there is already provision there in law for assault on children. So I don't know whether the children equal protection from assault Scotland bill makes it sound as if there's no protection for children from assault just now. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the name of the bill. Can I ask that question? I suppose it's just that it's removing a defence rather than doing that. I'm just interested to hear the thoughts of the panel on it because it's something that came up to me. Isn't it? Quite often laws are incompatible to the public. I'm not sure that that is necessarily a good thing and my right of place is the intent of the bill and the intent of the bill is to provide equal protection for children and adults as you know and to remove that. So as he said there is currently a ground of assault be it for adults, be it for children and I suppose the difference is that if I were to assault my child there is a defence where there is no defence. That's indefensible. We're drawing to an end and we have, I was going to call you a visiting MSP there, Gordon. If you have a quick question. Thank you convener. Just two quick questions. One is Professor Jane Callaghan said that if the result of this is that results in more parents having to pay a fine are going to prison then that's not a positive outcome. Does the panel agree with that? What she said about that? Yes I suppose I do. I mean I think obviously where there is severe abuse, severe assault be that of a child or an adult then obviously there is a case for going to court. Given that this hasn't happened in other countries, there hasn't been an increase, I think there has been more of an increase in that diversionary work and that sort of ability to offer support to families with alternative parenting strategies. I would not see it as beneficial for this bill to be sending parents to prison but nor do I anticipate that as a consequence of this bill. I wanted to come on to that point particularly I think from your evidence and Dr Hills because the point is what the bill does. I mean it's not just a technicality I think with respect Fulton MacGregor although I do take on board what he said. This is actually very serious the way the bill is framed for people that go into court or parents that might find the police knocking at their door. I wouldn't say the current situation if it can be described as Victorian. What this bill does is takes us backwards, it's medieval and the reason for that is because it falls back on the common law. Now New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, none of these countries ever dealt with this by the common law. They brought in in terms of clearly defined, we don't have time to look at the detail of the New Zealand Act of Parliament, clearly defined and I think you've comment about the need for the law to be clear. So I'm just wondering if you also agree with the Equalities and Human Rights Committee evidence here today that actually this needs to be looked at in terms of what the bill actually says if we put to one side the questions about whether or not the state should decide if parents smack or not. I mean do you agree with that evidence from the Equalities and Human Rights Committee today? Do you mean do I agree that there should be clarity? No. Sorry you don't believe there should be clarity. No sorry I said did you mean did I agree that it should be clear? No I think I've missed your point. No sorry perhaps I've made it too confused and my attempt to shorten it. I mean basically put to one side the arguments about the rights or wrongs of smacking and say here's the bill and these are the intentions in accordance with what you're doing. Do you agree that we need to look very carefully at what the bill provides in law particularly whereas here it doesn't relate in any way to what has been done in other countries? I'm not entirely clear on the legal processes so I'll make that absolutely clear and I'm here to talk about parenting interests. And so I would say that you know when sort of Annie Wells for example talked about the responsibilities of a parliamentary democracy and of what MSPs are elected to do. So I'm afraid I would hand that back to you and say that it's a responsibility of this committee and I suppose you're asking me that. I don't have the expertise but I'm sure you'll be calling other witnesses who will look at that. That would be my opinion as well that through the due process of this level of parliamentary scrutiny that those questions should be answered from legal experts. So I'm not sure that we have the right panel for that sorry. And as the convener I would say that that's exactly what the Equalities and Human Rights Committee will do through questioning our experts so thank you. John Finnie MSP is also with us. Do you wish to ask any questions? No questions like you can do. In which case can I thank you all very much for coming this morning and sharing your experience and evidence with us and we'll draw the session to a close.