Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon. Not surprisingly, given the time, he has had to leave the House, but he asked me to say that he remains very supportive of this amendment, and noble Lords will perhaps realise that we are talking about a former Lord Chief Justice, the head of the criminal courts of this country. This is the third time that I have tried to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. I tried it with a Labour Government under Tony Blair, I tried it with the Conservative and Lib Dem Government of David Cameron, and I am trying it now again with a Labour Government. It is very sad that, in all those years, absolutely nothing has been done. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has reminded the House, there is now a considerable body of medical evidence about the extent to which, and how slowly, the brains of children mature. We are talking about 10 year-olds. That evidence was not there when I asked the Government in 2006 but it is there now in 2026, yet there has still been no movement. Those who are very young at 10 will almost certainly know the difference between right and wrong, but what they will not know, which really does not come to us until we are older, is the extent of the consequences of the actions that they take. Again and again, those of us who are mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers and fathers will know perfectly well what I am talking about. That is true of criminal responsibility as well as the ordinary life that parents and grandparents have with their children. I said in Committee, and I must say again, that the four children’s commissioners of the United Kingdom said in a report that the UK is the most punitive of all the European countries. That is quite astonishing, but, unfortunately, it has not been picked up by any Government. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has reminded the House, Scotland has moved from the age of eight to 12 without any serious consequences. I cannot understand why a Government cannot move to some extent. It makes me think, and I say this with sadness, that every Government are scared of press headlines. I cannot see any other reason why they will not move. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, said this to me, and I say it to the Government: will they at least take this issue away and look at it? Will they just start to think that we are talking about 10 year-olds, and possibly move at some point? Speaking as a Cross-Bencher, I would have thought that a Labour Government, of all Governments, would understand this. I am truly sad that nothing so far has been done.