Under current laws, parents who do not provide their children with regular meals and drinks face being convicted of child neglect, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
But under proposals put forward by the Law Commission, courts could be given the power to convict parents and carers of attempted murder if they knowingly fail to properly provide for their children, meaning they could receive a maximum life sentence.
The commission says: "If a father or mother decided to kill their child by not providing the child with food, and had gone some way towards achieving that objective, it would be possible to charge (them) with the attempted murder of (the child) by starvation."
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