NEIL Mackay writes that “from next month, it’s illegal to hit your child” ("Those opposing smacking ban are beneath contempt", The Herald, October 15). Wrong. Violence against children is already illegal. You’d think the former newspaper editor would know this.

Next month, the reasonable chastisement defence – a defence that allows mums and dads to use light (reasonable) discipline without being criminalised – will be repealed, making any light discipline an offence. That’s a very different matter. We all want parents who "hit" their children to be stopped. But few thinking people consider a tap on the hand or the bottom as a form of abuse.

Secondly, consider Mr Mackay’s report on “brutish” parents in the supermarket who smack their children for "irritating behaviour". Mackay can’t hide his contempt for these shoppers. He can’t tolerate the fact that they adopt a different parenting method to his own. Perhaps he should shop at Waitrose if the behaviour of ordinary parents so offends his sensibilities?

Smacking ban advocates like Mr Mackay seem to think their parenting is better than ours and that their particular approach to child-rearing should be supported with the full force of the law.

For me the only people "beneath contempt" in this smacking debacle are the politicians who began this nonsensical campaign seeking and the journalists who look down their noses at Scottish parents.

Penny Lewis, Tayport.

I WAS interested to read Neil Mackay's defence of the Scottish Government's legislation to ban smacking, and was sorry to read of his personal experiences of physical abuse. I also applaud his self-control when tempted to hit his children.

However, I would like to take issue with some of the language he used. Is he inferring that my dear mother, rest her soul, was "beneath contempt" and was a "moral and intellectual failure" because of the "pointless cruelty" with which she made "a grotesque invasion of my liberty" when she "violently hit" me? None of these terms, by any stretch of the imagination, could be applied to her. The one or two times when she lightly smacked me, in another room so as not to humiliate me, was because of deliberate disobedience on my part, when I was about five. It did not damage our relationship. On the contrary, it helped to teach me respect for my parents and authority in general.

Nowhere in the Bible do "family values" mean beating children. How about Psalm 103:13 – As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him"?

There are already laws against genuine child abuse, and the police already have their hands full dealing with organised crime, for instance. This law sounds to me like another attempt by the Government to pursue their nanny state ideology and interfere in family life, as in the named person fiasco.

William Campbell, Lenzie.