Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in the gap, and I will be brief, pausing only to say in passing that I have listened carefully to the debate, having had no thought of speaking in it, and am entirely supportive of the Bill that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, has brought before the House.

I will pick up on one thing that came out of the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. He referred to his experience of having made what seemed to me, as he reported it, an entirely reasonable proposition in respect of the age of criminal responsibility, then subsequently found that the parents—or at any rate he referred to the mother—of Jamie Bulger had been contacted and asked whether she agreed that the age should be lowered such that his killers would, as I think the noble Lord reported it, “get away with it”. That anecdote—I do not mean to trivialise it by calling it an anecdote but it is an anecdote in the sense that it is the noble Lord’s recollection—rather points at something that I fear may be behind the kind of reaction we have had so far from government to the proposal, which has been supported all around the House and by everybody who has spoken so far in this debate, that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised. Politicians inevitably have that fear—that if they do something which appears to be liberal, they will be hounded for it and held to account in an entirely unhelpful and irresponsible way.

I do not underestimate the fear that politicians have of being held to account by, as it were, the Daily Mail. However, is not the job of politics not just to follow public opinion as represented by the press but to lead it? When an issue of this kind is so unanimously held up as requiring reform as it has been today, and clearly is so viewed in wider society, it is important that politicians grow a backbone. I therefore address my remarks both to the Minister when he comes to reply and to my noble friend on the Opposition Front Bench, to ask them to consider that it is their responsibility to listen to the evidence and to make decisions that are clearly in the interests of the children whose lives we wish to protect, and not to be too frightened to make decisions, which may indeed result in the kind of press coverage that people do not like to get, but are none the less the right decisions.