Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

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

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness. It was a powerful speech, rooted in her personal experience, and all the more effective for that. We need to hear a great deal more from her on these issues in this House. I join her in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for enabling us to support the Bill again today. The noble Lord has a long history of constant commitment to enlightened social reform. There are a few of us in this House who can begin to reflect on what he has stood for, with a great deal of courage on occasions, over so long.

I am half Scottish and I am very glad to see that in response to international recommendations, the Scots have undertaken to raise the age. This Bill gives us an opportunity to catch up with the Scots. There is powerful advocacy out there, which has been recommending for a long time that this change is imperative. The UK’s children’s commissioners are united in their support for a move of this kind; surely we should listen to them.

We spend a lot of time in this House debating the importance of non-governmental organisations and the key role they have to play in advancing effective social policy. It therefore seems important that, on an issue of this kind, we listen to what they have to say. I was struck by a concise but helpful paper submitted to us by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. Let me share some of its recommendations with your Lordships. It says:

“Proponents of the current age of criminal responsibility argue that 10-year-olds ‘know the difference between right and wrong’ and must be held responsible for their actions. However, as the National Association of Youth Justice … has argued, developing morality is ‘not a once and for all achievement; it improves with conceptual maturity’”.


I had the privilege for nine years of being president of the YMCA and I was particularly struck by the work it did with young offenders. I tried to follow that as closely as I could. That last recommendation was repeatedly obvious. Sometimes it was moving to see, in the context of work being done with young offenders, that they began to discover themselves—who they were, what responsibility was and how they could begin to face up to that responsibility in society. That could happen quite late in the teens; it could happen in their early 20s as well.

If I may just digress for a moment, I sometimes think that when we are dealing with the young and children it is particularly important that we do not spend enough time in this second Chamber, which is surely the place where we should be doing it, debating exactly what criminality is in our complex society. What is criminal and what is not? Where does irresponsibility become criminal in effect, in the damage and harm it does to people? That is particularly true for those of us who are politicians, in all parts of our political system. Sometimes the effects of what we recommend are criminal; far more criminal than anything that would be considered in a youth justice system.

The standing committee continued by saying:

“Neurological, conceptual and psychosocial developments continue through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, and alter a person’s ability to understand and assess situations and control their behaviour. The pre-frontal cortex—which is key to decision-making and impulse control—is one of the slowest areas of the brain to mature. An understanding of third-parties’ perspectives, empathy (which is an inhibitor to offending), and impulse control are by no means fully developed at 10 years old, and the capacity to consider long-term consequences is limited”.


If I have one criticism of the Bill, it is that the target is 12. That is far too young and we should be aiming for something more senior, although I am not all sure that I am convinced about having targets at all in this context. What seems to me important in justice is to assess the person before you and see what is necessary and true, and what have been the influences on that person’s life. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, said so powerfully, often—perhaps in the majority of cases—the people before us are in fact victims. The Bill is a step forward and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for having introduced it. I hope that the House will warmly endorse it.