B

Baroness Brinton (LD)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 18 March 2026

Debate

Crime and Policing Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for bringing this amendment back and for her speech, and to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for their detailed exposition. I may be marginally longer than I was in my previous speech, because I particularly want to thank my noble friend Lord Dholakia for championing this issue in the decades that he has been in your Lordships’ House. It would be wonderful if we could make further progress on this. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for the compromise. Despite the fact that I am a former trustee of UNICEF UK and would advocate that 14 is a good age, as it does, there is some merit in having the same age of criminal responsibility as in Scotland. We can learn from how Scotland has implemented it—everything is there, ready for us to learn from. The most important thing is that, instead of criminalising children between the ages of 10 and 12, we prioritise safeguarding and care for them, because, as others have said, they are the most vulnerable children in our society.

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