I attended the Justice and Home Affairs Council at which this issue was discussed, and I have to say that there was extensive disquiet among member states. If the Commission wishes to be credible, it cannot simply ignore the system that was put in place by the Lisbon treaty in the way that it did in that particular case.
Let me turn to the second item on the list, which is the proposal on child defendants. By any assessment, I consider the UK arrangements for dealing with and helping children who become engaged with the law enforcement agencies and with criminal proceedings to be very good. There is a raft of specific provisions in place in the UK to assist children in those situations, and we wholeheartedly support the principle that children in those circumstances need to be treated differently from adults in some respects, given their particular vulnerabilities.
Beyond the general principle behind the proposal, however, and given that the UK’s current arrangements provide a significant degree of protection as good as that available anywhere else, the proposal presents significant difficulties. First, the definition of a child in the proposal is set at those under 18 years of age. In England and Wales, the procedural protections provided to suspects and defendants based on their age are varied to reflect the specific circumstances of their case. Article 1 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child—to which the UK is a signatory, and to which the coalition Government undertook to give due consideration when making new policies and legislation—contains the same definition. In the context of the courts, prisons and the probation service, those under 18 years of age are treated as children and young people. However, there is a different approach for when the police deal with 17-year-olds under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, when, for practical reasons, 17-year-olds suspected of committing an offence are for some purposes treated as adults. Clearly, that would be an issue in regard to these proposals as well. The position in Scotland stands in even clearer contrast to the proposal, as it tends to treat younger people—that is, those aged 16 and above—as adults for these and other purposes.