Coroners and Justice Bill

My remarks will, I trust, harmonise with those already expressed during the debate on this line of amendments although, such was the depth and the sophistication of the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and indeed that by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, I cannot be absolutely sure. Moreover, in comparison to those speeches, what I am about to say will seem exceedingly naive. Our amendments in this group were suggested by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. They reinsert, as will be obvious to all of your Lordships, the Law Commission’s recommendation in its 2004 Report Partial Defences to Murder, which was designed to bring the criminal law into compliance with Article 40 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Law Commission’s report on partial defences noted the opinion of one expert, the forensic psychiatrist Dr Eileen Vizard, who felt that the definition of diminished responsibility is defective in relation to children and young people because, as your Lordships are well aware, it omits references to developmental immaturity. The Law Commission agreed that there was a need to make these changes, but ultimately preferred to wait for a discrete review of the law of murder as it relates to children. Our amendments would, we believe, ensure that the diminished responsibility partial defence could be available to a child or a young person under the age of 18 if their developmental immaturity substantially impairs their ability to understand the nature of their conduct. They would be guilty of manslaughter rather than murder, giving the judge a full range of sentencing options, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has already observed. As the honourable David Howarth said on behalf of the Liberal Democrats in another place, the way the clause in the Bill is drafted is anomalous. A person who is physically 40 but has a mental age of 10 would be covered; the same would be true of a 17 year-old with the mental development of a 10 year-old. The trial would proceed on the basis, in other words, that there was a partial defence. Yet that benefit would not extend to a child of 10 who acted like a child of 10. Our amendments would give children the benefit of being children without having to show that they were immature for their age. They cannot understand the nature of their conduct under proposed new subsection (1)(a) of Section 2 of the Homicide Act 1957 because of their developmental immaturity.