Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I have my name attached to the amendments, and I strongly support them. It is hard to follow the eloquent and pithy contribution from my noble friend, with all her experience in psychiatric matters. As vice-chair of the All-Party Group for Children and Young People in Care and a trustee of a fostering agency, I am particularly concerned that children who have experienced trauma may not be recognised or caught by the system. We should treat all our children fairly and, in particular, take care to treat our neglected children fairly. I will never forget hearing from a 20 year-old ex-offender—a young woman—about her experience of being removed from her children’s home at the age of 14. She was told on the day of her removal that she was to be given another placement, having settled and become attached to where she was. She was then forcibly removed from her children’s home. At the age of 20, when she spoke to parliamentarians in the House, she said that she dated her history of criminal activity from that experience. On another occasion I heard another young woman describing her experience in a children’s home. It was as if she was describing a waiting room for prison. Children develop differently, as my noble friend has said. Neglected children can follow particularly tortuous lines of development. These amendments seek to recognise that. It is possible to be developmentally immature without having a recognised abnormality of mental functioning. The law needs to recognise this. In April of this year, at a one-day legal conference organised by the Michael Sieff Foundation, Lord Justice Toulson, chairman of the Law Commission, described the omission of these amendments as "significant". He said: ""The inclusion of the phrase ‘a recognised medical condition’ in the definition of diminished responsibility would represent a tightening as well as a clarification of the defence, but to include that requirement while excluding developmental immaturity in the case of a young offender has consequences which I do not think could have been thought through. It produces the bizarre result that if a 25 year old killer has the developmental age of a 12 year old …"" Here I end the quotation because I think we have already covered that point. The point here is that Lord Justice Toulson, the chairman of the Law Commission, in referring to the current clause, talks about, ""consequences which I do not think could have been thought through"" and uses the term "bizarre" in describing the way that the commission’s recommendations on this matter have been treated. I strongly support the amendments and hope that the Minister may now agree to them. I have good reason to hope that he might, given the achievements for children, particularly vulnerable children, that he and his colleagues have been responsible for over the past 10 years. I look forward to his response.