Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill [HL]

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I express my deepest gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for introducing the Bill, and, more generally, for his persistent advocacy of the cause that informs it. I am also delighted to be following four noble Lords who have done splendid work in this area, and whose contributions I recognise.

Naturally, in a debate that has gone on for some years, many of the arguments made today have been made before. Therefore, it is difficult to find entirely new arguments. Naturally, I will repeat some of the arguments that have already been made, but also perhaps add one or two that I think are new and go to answer the point that the Government have made over the years as to why they will not accept the idea of raising the age of criminal responsibility.

The current age of 10 is unacceptable for at least four important reasons. First, it is far below the international norm. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recommends the age of 12. If one looks at other countries in a similar position to us, the situation is quite striking. The age of criminal responsibility is 12 in Canada and the Netherlands; 13 in France; 14 in Germany, Austria, Italy and Russia; 15 in Scandinavian countries; and 16 in Belgium, Luxembourg and Portugal. A striking exception, which makes the point, is the United States, where the age of criminal responsibility is six—but then the United States has never been a good model for criminal justice. I do not think that that is the country we would wish to emulate, in this respect at least.

The other important point is that those countries whose cases I have cited have been perfectly happy. Many of them settled on an age of criminal responsibility several years ago and have seen no reason to alter it or to bring it down. If they can live with the age that they have decided, there is no reason why we cannot.

The second reason for increasing the age of criminal responsibility has to do with the larger, cultural question. The age of responsibility reflects society’s attitude to its young people. Those taking a dim view of young people—almost a Calvinist view in which children are supposed to be little devils who must be tamed by force, which dominated the Victorian period—generally tend to go for a younger age of criminal responsibility. Sadly, this is true of our own country. We imprison four times more people than Portugal, 25 times more people than France and 100 times more people than Finland. Raising the age of criminal responsibility raises society’s respect for its young people and is a profoundly significant cultural factor. Rather than rush to lock up a child, society’s gaze is now fixed—should be fixed—on what can be done to prevent a child behaving in this way. That is an important, constructive point to consider rather than simply punishing a child who has behaved in a certain way.

The third reason that I wish strongly to increase the age of criminal responsibility is in response to the Government’s continual argument over the years that children of 10, or even younger, are able to differentiate between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing, and, therefore, that if they are able to do that, they should be held responsible. I am afraid that I do not see the logic of that argument because responsibility does not have much to do with whether one is able to make a distinction or not; it has to do with a sense of agency and whether one is able to act on that distinction. One may be able to think of a child who is able to make a distinction between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing. But the question is whether the child has been brought up in a certain way, is able to control his temperament and exercise self-restraint, is able to think through the enormity of what he is about to do and empathise with the person upon whom he is about to inflict punishment. If a child cannot do those things, he will be unable to act on the distinction that we talked about earlier. The child knows what serious wrongdoing is but cannot avoid it for the reasons that I have just mentioned. In that kind of situation, the response should be to intervene with children’s services teams and, where necessary, by family court proceedings. Criminalising such a child would mean a permanent stigma; it would mark him out for ever and offer little hope of reform or reintegration.

My fourth and final argument has to do with the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, which was repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others: namely, the sheer cost of this. Although the number is small—about 100 10 year-olds and about 400 11 year-olds have been criminalised—the question is: how much does it cost to keep people in prison, especially when one considers the question of reoffending? At that point one needs to ask: how much will this cost and what are the results of doing this? I therefore strongly suggest that common sense and economic cost analysis, as well as basic moral principles—plus, of course, our standing in the community of civilised nations—require that we increase the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to whatever we consider proper, but certainly no less than 12.