Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill [HL]

Lord McNally Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I can think of no better privilege than to follow the first three speakers in the debate on these matters. I respect their experience and am a great admirer of their record in these areas. I would not describe my noble friend Lord Dholakia as a partner in crime but he has certainly been a great mentor for me on these issues for a very long time.

Yesterday, I started my speech on overcrowding with the Churchill quote about how a society treats its prisoners being a mark of its civilisation. If that is true, and it certainly is, then it must be doubly true about how we treat our children who fall foul of the law. The problem is that as I look at the speakers list, and as I suspect we shall hear today, there is something missing in our debate. As I pointed out yesterday, and as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, pointed out with a wry smile, this debate would not take place in the same atmosphere down the Corridor. When we talk about getting changes in the law, we have to acknowledge the fact that there are other voices than those which will be heard today.

The other thing I took from yesterday’s debate was the constant reference from a number of noble Lords with great experience in this area to the importance of early intervention. From my three years’ experience at the Youth Justice Board, I certainly took away that very good lesson: that the earlier we can intervene, the better the chance of avoiding a life of crime for the individual concerned. Something else the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, referred to, is that the more we can break down the silos of various interventions at this early stage, the better, so that the young person concerned gets an holistic approach to their needs.

I would like to illustrate this with three examples from my experience at the Youth Justice Board, each of which indicates what we face and, somewhat, how we might overcome it. First, when I went to a conference of experts in dealing with young offenders in Bucharest, I was genuinely taken aback by the fact that lots of people came up to me and said, not in criticism but with a kind of understanding sympathy, “Yes, well of course we understand that you Anglo-Saxons have a penal and punishment way of approaching offences by children, whereas in my country it is more therapeutic”. I do not think that is entirely true because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, indicated, there are lots of interventions and there is a lot of very good thinking and study going on about how best to deal with some of the problems facing young offenders, but nevertheless one has to face the fact that ours is a punishment-led concept. Although the YJB sometimes bridles at the Howard League’s description of YOIs as “child prisons”, if you go to them you will leave feeling that you have just been to a child prison. We are not as bad as perhaps our reputation implies, but there is a punishment-led, penal, criminal justice, court-led approach to how we deal with young offenders.

My second story is from after I became chairman of the YJB. I gave an interview to a magazine that specialised in children and young people, and I was asked about the age of criminal responsibility. I said, in very general terms, that I thought there was a case for raising the age limit. A day or two after the magazine was published, one of our popular tabloids had a story based on an interview with Jamie Bulger’s mother. It basically quoted my statement and said, “What do you think of changing the law so that Jamie’s murderers would have got away with it?”. There is no doubt that the Bulger murder has cast a long shadow over this debate, and the willingness of certain sections of the popular press to continue to pick at that scab has done much damage to our approach. That does not in any way take away sympathy and understanding of the sheer horror of losing a child in the circumstances in which Mrs Bulger lost her child.

My third story was referred to by my noble friend Lord Dholakia. A year or so ago, I talked to a very senior and distinguished judge who a few days before our conservation had been to Preston Crown Court, where I have never been. He said that he stood in Preston Crown Court, which is a dark, sombre, Victorian creation with portraits on the wall and so on, in disbelief that 20 years ago two 10 year-old boys stood in the dock and faced the full panoply of a judge and barristers in wigs and the full power of a Crown Court trial. As my noble friend said, we have come a long way in how we treat young offenders although, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said in his report on youth justice, there is a strong case for reforming the way young people are dealt with and doubt about whether the Crown Court is ever the right place. The problem is that the media continually sensationalise. I pay tribute to the way the Attorney-General Jeremy Wright has resisted attempts to break embargoes on naming young people.

Early intervention has been put forward as a solution, as has diversion from trapping young people in the revolving doors of the CJS. Reference has been made to the changes in neuropsychological understanding which have had a massive impact on developments in the past 20 years. I believe that the case is overwhelming. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, that it is not a silver bullet, but it would most certainly be a step in the right direction.