Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I support this amendment. The problem is to do with so-called normal children. The noble Lord has already talked about the partial defence that is available to the mentally handicapped adult who is intellectually functioning, or who may have a developmental delay in other emotional areas as a result of learning disabilities, for example. The law provides for that, but developmental delays are quite frequently seen in perfectly normal children. Children all develop at different rates in different parts of their brains. Heavens, I could talk about the development of the medulla being at a different stage to that of the frontal lobe, and at a different stage to the parietal lobes, but I do not think that I need to. All noble Lords who have had children and adolescents around the house will know very well that there are different stages. It is normal for children to have different stages of developmental maturity at different ages in the course of growing up. All the amendment seeks to do is to allow for children without obvious profound developmental delay or learning disabilities to be considered in respect of those areas where they may have very specific emotional or developmental problems. Really, it would allow them to be treated in the same way as adults. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has said, this does nothing to lower the bar and, indeed, still allows a court to find murder in the right circumstances and diminished responsibility in others. This amendment would allow for a very small group of children and adolescents to be treated more appropriately, given that we have now given up the doli incapax provisions, and the difficulties that children now face before the courts.