George Bernard Shaw observed that although being a parent is a very important profession, there is no test of fitness for it. But it’s a good thing that the state doesn’t get prescriptive and require people to pass parenting proficiency tests before conceiving. Parliament is far from being a house of perfect parents.

But we do have some law to apply when parenting gets so dismal that even the most basic standards are breached. Recently, at Welshpool magistrates’ court in Wales, a woman was convicted of wilfully neglecting her child. She had abandoned her 14-year-old daughter while she slid off to Greece for a six-week jaunt with a toyboy. The mother left her child in a house with no hot water, £100 and some frozen meals. The mother knew the child was in a sexual relationship but was evidently unconcerned.

How caring does the law specify that a parent must be? Sensibly, it doesn’t supply a complete code of care but simply forbids things like “wilful neglect”. The word “wilful” here means the parent was aware that their neglect would put their child’s health at risk. It also covers the “am I bovvered?” parent who isn’t aware that their neglect will risk their child’s health only because they don’t care at all about such risks.

Prosecutions can be brought under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 if someone who is 16 or over (usually an adult parent), wilfully neglects anyone under 16 for whom they are responsible. The crime occurs if the parent wilfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects or abandons the child in a way “likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health”. The phrase “injury to health” includes physical injury or suffering or “mental derangement”. The offence carries a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment.

This legislation relies on case law to define its key words. The word “abandon” in the Act means “to leave a child to its fate”. In a case in 1957, Edward Boulden was convicted of abandoning and neglecting his five children (aged between one and nine) in their home in Feltham, outside London. After an argument, his wife left their home to go to Glasgow. Later, Mr Boulden left the home and phoned the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to say his children were alone. He’d left them all in the unlit house with little food (two loaves, two pints of milk, one egg), and gone to Glasgow after his wife. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment.

A parent can be convicted even when a child suffering, or the likelihood of it suffering, was avoided by the arrival of another person (as in the Boulden case where the police arrived the day the father left), or where the victim actually died.

Under the law, a parent is deemed to have neglected a child “in manner likely to cause injury to his health” if he has failed to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid or lodging. And it’s not necessarily a defence for an accused parent to say suffering wouldn’t have happened if an agency had stepped in to help. In a case in 1896, a man earning £1 a week spent it all on drink, except about 3s (15p) a week, which he gave to his wife for her and the support of their four children. The wife was unable to supply the children with enough food and clothing and they suffered in health as a result. The court rejected an argument from the father that harm wouldn’t have occurred if the mother had sought help under the poor law.

The law doesn’t fix any specific age below 16 at which children can be left at home alone. It needs to be flexible because, while some 12-year-old people can be very mature, some 15-year-olds are very immature. Home-alone cases are judged on all their particular facts.

One striking thing about the wilful neglect law is that its rare use in the courts doesn’t reflect a rarity of the social plight. Although home-alone court cases crop up only periodically, the problems of neglect are more common. In 2006, it was reported that 688 children who called the emergency agency ChildLine said neglect was their main problem. And an NSPCC survey in 2000 found that six per cent of under-12s experience a “serious absence of care", including frequently going hungry.

It is desirable, though, for the law to in this area to be applied cautiously. Locking up 600 parents for six months wouldn’t solve a lot of problems, and there are better ways to spend the £9 million that such imprisonment would cost.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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