They usually have higher excesses too

They usually have higher excesses, too.”People need to think carefully about what they’re giving up with no-frills policies,” Staddon cautions. “My worry is that people will swap, thinking that they’re getting the same deal, only to find out they’re not when it’s too late.”Keith Milne, the head of personal lines at Norwich Union, points out there are even simpler steps you can take to save money, such as buying your policy online, or paying your annual premium in one go.Finally, motorists will soon be able to cut their premiums by opting to use new pay-as-you-go technology. I’m not convinced smacking is always wrong, although like most parents I usually keep my views to myself and I’d never smack a child in public. If smacking is done in anger, she warns, it models a parent who has lost it and we want to teach our kids to be able to cope.

If it is done coolly, it signifies a level of emotional disengagement that seems almost superhuman.Yet her arguments go against the gut instincts of many sane, caring parents. I couldn’t find one who was willing to defend smacking, and plenty wanted to warn against it. Such as Karen Jones, an educational psychologist from Halifax, West Yorkshire. Many good parents have known for years that there’s a time and a place when a quickly administered smack can help a child to learn, and learn quickly.”Child psychologists disagree. “But we say, child abuse is already illegal: and the laws that exist are enough to protect children who are genuinely abused. We don’t need to start clogging up the courts with non-abusive parents: what that could very well mean is that abusive parents slip through the net.

Currently, parents can be prosecuted if they administer a smack that leaves a mark or causes permanent damage but the Government stopped short of a total ban despite vociferous campaigning by a raft of children’s charities.”Children’s rights campaigners would like to criminalise any parent who administers any smack,” says Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, a charity promoting Christian values, which does not to support a ban. “It’s essential for their psychological well-being that you let them know where those boundaries are and a smack is a clear boundary. I started from around the time they could walk and from around school-age they mostly didn’t need it any more, because they had learnt where the boundaries are. I know there’s a shame agenda, but I think if there’s enough love in a family, it’s probably going to be all right.”Our sense that smacking verges on child abuse is helped along by legislation to control first teachers’ and then parents’ right to use physical punishment. “I believe children will test boundaries, not just to check whether they can get through but to check they can’t get through,” she says. Cuddles, she says, always follow.My friend Camilla, a mother of six, is a doctor and one of the most sensible mums you could hope to meet. This is my home and, as long as they live with me, I’m in control.”Mark and Jenny seem sensible, loving and well-balanced: they have five children aged six to 17 and are committed Christians For them, discipline involves the possibility of a smack.

“If we decide that the child is being wilfully disobedient and they need a smacked bottom then we would normally take them into another room and say, ‘Mummy and Daddy need to have a little talk with you now’ and explain what it is they’ve done wrong and give them a smacked bottom,” says Jenny. It’s not pretty, but does it work? Davis thinks so: “You don’t listen, you get whacked and that’s it. She stares hard, she shouts loud, her constant refrain to her three kids, aged 14, 11 and 10, is “enough, enough!” She is rarely seen without the plastic spatula that’s either being slapped noisily across her kitchen table or one of her kids’ bodies. The programme features parents who have no shame in smacking their kids because they believe it gets across a message about bad behaviour in a way that other sanctions don’t.It’s unfortunate that some of the smacking proponents are a bit the wrong side of spooky You wouldn’t want to meet Angela Davis on a dark night. And in my experience, they learn, and learn fast.”That mother – let’s call her Camilla – isn’t in I Smack and I’m Proud, but she’d have been perfect.

That’s what works about smacking: it’s instant, it’s quickly over and it’s unequivocal. “But what do you do if they won’t go to their bedroom? You have to work out other strategies, and all the while you’re losing ground and floundering and the child is getting the upper hand. They’ve been warned, so I’ve had to carry out threats,” she said. Unlike Tony Blair, who once said he had smacked his older children but didn’t believe in it any more, Tana wasn’t apologising.Nor are most of the parents in I Smack and I’m Proud, an ITV documentary next week that talks to parents who believe that smacking once in a while is a perfectly acceptable method of letting your child know who’s boss – “nature’s way” of instilling discipline.”We’ve built up a complicated process of discipline that involves time out and confining them to their bedrooms,” says one parent, who smacked her six children and feels it worked well. Your voice has to be laden with contrition and you must always, always end with the words: “To be honest, it made me feel like a rubbish parent and a total failure.”But are we selling ourselves short? Tana Ramsay, wife of Gordon, seems to think so: she didn’t sound ashamed of herself when she said in an interview last week that she smacks their four kids “I have smacked bottoms. (Or is he? She does drive us to distraction; there are times when we’ve lashed out.