Baroness Hamwee (LD)

My noble friend Lady Brinton added her name to all these amendments. I was happy that she did so. I am also happy to have the opportunity —of course, not at her expense—of expressing my support for them this evening. Inevitably, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, has said, there is rather a lot of repetition in this over a period of years. We touched on visual age assessments—I cannot remember on which day in Committee—and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, as she always has done, expressed her clear views about visual assessment being inappropriate. She said she had talked—coming from her cultural and ethnic background; I align myself with her in this—to young males whose looks raised a question in her mind as to what age they were. However hard we try, our own backgrounds leave us with a bias, I suppose—an inbuilt bias, an expectation. We have to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. I recall being in the education centre of this House, talking to young students who I think were at the top end of primary school. There was one young student who, if you went by facial hair, would have been regarded as twice as old as he actually was. I recall also being very impressed by his presentation; the students were discussing how they would campaign for a change in the law, although I suppose I should not go into that tonight. My noble friend also has in this group Amendments 180 and 194, supported by, among others, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield. Amendment 180 deals with criminal proceedings, and my noble friend says that a mandatory referral age for age assessment in those proceedings follows from the basic argument regarding assessment for immigration purposes. Amendment 194, as the noble Baroness has said, is about accommodation. Some people assume that everyone in asylum accommodation is a criminal and a danger to local residents. It is good that we have the opportunity to recognise that a child in adult accommodation, in adult detention, is a vulnerable child, and I just use the amendment to make that point.