Alliance bid to ban smacking children in Northern Ireland dropped - DUP say it would have 'criminalised parents'

Edwin Poots has turned down the amendment to Naomi Long’s justice bill, which would have removed the defence of “reasonable punishment” offered to parents.

The legislation has had a number of major changes tagged on, including an attempt to raise the age at which children are held criminally responsible from the current age of 10, to 14.

It is within the gift of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s speaker to decide which proposals go forward to be debated and voted on at Stormont, and his decisions are not subject to challenge.

Physical punishment of children is legal in Northern Ireland and England, but has been banned in Scotland and Wales.

The ‘Equal Protection Working Group’, a coalition of children’s rights organisations, health professional bodies and charities, has expressed “profound disappointment” over the decision not to proceed with Alliance MLA Michelle Guy’s proposal.

The group said that the amendment “would have brought Northern Ireland into line with international human rights standards and ensured that children have the exact same legal protection from physical assault as adults”.

They said that “with the current legislative window drawing to a close, this is a major missed opportunity to provide greater protection for children in NI, and reforming this outdated and harmful legal loophole must be one of the top priorities for an incoming executive and assembly”.

The DUP's Paul Frew has told the BBC that the state should not involve itself in an argument about what its good parenting.

The North Antrim MLA, who is his party’s justice spokesman, said: “I think that if a system's not broken, why try to fix it?

“I think that parents have enough to be dealing with without the state encroaching on things like this.

“I believe it would criminalise parents, and I think the state will do well to stay out of what is a debate about good parenting.”