A sweeping parenting law that would criminalise emotional neglect was included in the Queen’s Speech on June 4.
The new law would carry a maximum prison sentence of ten years for anyone who deliberately harms a child’s ‘physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development’. But critics have warned against the legislation, saying it would mean that ‘every mother and father is at risk of being labelled an abuser’.
Campaigners who are in favour of the law claim that it would better protect the 1.5 million British children who are believed to be suffering from emotional neglect. (22,000 children are currently on the child protection register.) But critics argue that the new definition of emotional abuse gives a dangerously subjective law a wide reach.
