Nannies to face a ban on smacking

Ministers expected to back tough new regulations, including a right for parents to hear of earlier complaints

Nannies and childminders are to be forbidden to smack children in their charge under proposals to a government review of childcare.

Ministers are looking into the regulations governing people who care for children and have been persuaded that they are not tough enough.

Although the review will not be concluded until later this year, Baroness Ashton, the minister in charge, has accepted that smacking by childminders and nannies should be outlawed. Under the existing rules they can smack children with the permission of the parents.

The change is the result of a campaign backed by parents, charities and MPs which is also calling for a register of nannies, so that parents know in detail who is looking after their children. Full access to any complaints against childminders is also being demanded.

Ofsted, the body responsible for regulation, has been asked to put together a strategy for tougher controls, which could include a long-awaited nanny register and the introduction of consent forms that childminders could sign, allowing access to any relevant convictions or complaints against them.

Lady Ashton recently met the Labour MP for Croydon Central, Geraint Davies, and his constituents Ken and Libby Osbourne, whose son Joshua was shaken to death by his childminder, to discuss the campaign's proposals. She is understood to have indicated her sympathy for their stance and a willingness to act.

Mr Osbourne said he was "cautiously optimistic" that, after more than a year of campaigning, reform would now start to happen. However, he said that action could be accelerated by public support, and urged people with concerns on the issue to contact Ofsted. The Osbournes also want to warn other parents of the dangers. "One of the things we feel is that it needs education of parents particularly who make the assumption that it can't happen to them. Our childminder was really nice and it happened to us," Mr Osbourne said. "We instigated this because we didn't want it to happen to someone else. We wanted change in the regulations and the laws."

Mr Davies said Joshua might still have been alive if the history of complaints against Linda Bayfield, his childminder, had come to light. But even now, the laws would allow her to work as a nanny – highlighting the need for a register. He thought it was "absurd" that childminders could be given permission to smack children, describing it as "an open door to abuse and physical and psychological damage".

The MP said he was encouraged by the Government's apparent change of mind on the issue and the minister's willingness to look at the issue again.

The campaign against smacking and unregistered nannies, and the calls for access to complaints against childminders, is backed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which says that current British laws on hitting children are out of step with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also points to legislation banning smacking, even by parents themselves, in Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia and Israel.

The Government, however, is unlikely to extend a ban on smacking by childminders and nannies to parents. Ministers have repeatedly defended the right of parents to use "reasonable chastisement". Recent polling data shows that a majority of people believe there is a case for changing the law on smacking to protect children as long as parents could not be prosecuted for "trivial smacks".

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "The Government has announced its intention to review the childminding and daycare standards which set the minimum quality standards for childminders and daycare providers. The content of this review has not yet been announced."