Coroners and Justice Bill

In the light of the Government’s refusal to recognise the concept of developmental immaturity in relation to children, the lack of a transitional stage in a child’s development as a potential criminal between the ages of 10 and 14 is a matter of great concern to these Benches. Set at 10 years of age, the threshold for criminal responsibility in England and Wales is one of the lowest in western Europe. It is 13 in France, 14 in Germany and 16 in Spain. A number of those countries also have something akin to doli incapax in force as well as a higher age of criminal responsibility. Indeed, it is perhaps shocking that the age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10, whereas for males in Iran it is 14 years and nine months. Horrifyingly, for females in Iran, it is eight-and-a-half years, but perhaps we need not trouble with that further at this stage. Our age of criminal responsibility is set so low as to cause concern that, without a special category of developmental immaturity, there is a risk of unjust conviction of those who simply are not of a capacity fully to understand what they are doing or have done. Even the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed concern about the United Kingdom’s law of juvenile criminal responsibility. That committee said that it might be incompatible with Articles 37 and 40 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to have our age of criminal responsibility set so low, leading to a recommendation that, ""serious consideration be given to raising the age of criminal responsibility throughout the areas of the United Kingdom"." That comment was made by the UN before the abolition of doli incapax. It would seem therefore odd that the abolition of doli incapax has not been accompanied by raising the statutory age of criminal responsibility. As a result of all the legislation that has been enacted so far, in particular the Crime and Disorder Act, and the proposed legislation we are considering tonight, all children of 10 years of age and more will be presumed and treated as having the same moral culpability and ability to conduct themselves as an adult. We illustrated in the last debate that it could be even worse than that—that children could be in a less advantaged position than adults. In the case of C (a minor) v DPP, Lord Lowry, quoted from elsewhere, ""No civilised society regards children as accountable for their actions to the same extent as adults"." Without the measures which the noble Baroness has been urging, or something like them—she has put it broadly and I wholly support her—we will be left as a society which regards children not only as accountable for their actions to the same extent as adults but we shall leave children as presumed to be accountable to the same extent as adults for actions for which in fact, as any good psychiatrist will tell us, they are not actually fully accountable. There is a real danger that if we pursue this legislation to the letter in its current draft form there will be a severe injustice to children which it will be left somehow for the courts to sort out. In the penultimate debate, the noble and learned Baroness, the Attorney-General, suggested that what was being proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, was a fudge. If the Government will not meet these problems, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, the fudge will simply be handed on to the courts. The Court of Appeal will have to produce the fudge in order to safeguard the interests of children. That should not be the task of the Court of Appeal; it should be the role of this Parliament and this House to produce legislation that meets the apprehended justice of cases like those we have in mind.