Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill [HL]

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)]

My Lords, the country should be very grateful to my noble friend Lord Dholakia for pursuing this question of the minimum age of criminal responsibility. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that this is a civilised country, but we are exceptional in our treatment of young people in respect of their criminal propensities. The circumstances in other European countries that have raised the minimum age of criminal responsibility are not necessarily different from ours. Belgium, Luxembourg, Lithuania and other countries have decided that the minimum age should be much higher than it is in this country.

We are also offending against the recommendation in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in making it clear that we are not prepared to accept raising the minimum age to 12, which has been supported by most countries.

The debate so far has been extremely effective. My noble friend Lord McNally, who is in charge of youth justice, made a very powerful speech. He spoke for himself and I hope he will be listened to by the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who is answering the debate, has had his ear bent by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who suggested that he should be talking with our new and rather enlightened Secretary of State, who has made some significant changes in the nature of the laws we advocate in this country. I was a great admirer of Lord Bingham—Tom Bingham—who was a year ahead of me at college. His book, The Rule of Law, is one of the most heavyweight arguments about what we ought to be thinking about in this country. On equality, he said:

“Most British people today would, I think, rightly regard equality before the law as a cornerstone of our society … But we would also accept that some categories of people should be treated differently because their position is in some important respect different. Children are the most obvious example. Children are, by definition, less mature than a normal adult, and should not therefore be treated as a normal adult would expect to be treated. Thus they are not liable to be prosecuted for crime below a certain age (in Britain it is conclusively presumed that no child under the age of ten can be guilty of any offence, a younger age than in most comparable European countries); if convicted of crime, they should not be punished as a normal adult would be punished”.

That is a very wise statement.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, expressed in powerful terms how young people should be treated; how, if they are guilty of offences, they should not necessarily be dragged before a court and how doing so might make them reoffenders. That is too common in this country and we need to root it out. The whole purpose of our response to offences should be to root out the propensity to reoffend and to inspire people to live lives in concordance with the law.

My noble friend Lord Dholakia is introducing this measure at a very suitable time and I hope it will be recognised that the movement to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility should not necessarily stop at 12 but should go beyond. As the UN has stated that 12 is internationally acceptable, that would be a very good move in the right direction but let us not end the argument there.