Contribution
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment and I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has said. This is the third time that I have tried to raise the age of criminal responsibility in this House. I tried first in the Blair Government and lost. I tried the second time in the coalition Government and lost. On each occasion, I asked for a modest increase, to 12. I would be content with 12, but I would naturally prefer 14. It is very sad, but I just wonder whether every Government, of whichever political persuasion, are so afraid of the press and the press headlines that they are not prepared to change the law. Some years ago, the four children’s commissioners of the United Kingdom wrote a joint report in which they said that the United Kingdom is the most punitive country in the whole of Europe. That has not changed.
I tried two relevant cases: the first was on the anonymity of the Bulger killers, aged 10; the second was Mary Bell, aged 10. I do not know whether noble Lords know that the two Bulger killers, aged 10, had found a pornographic video hidden under the bed of the father of one of them, and they watched it. It was a story of how to kill a small child after painting the child blue. Those two little boys went out and did exactly what the film had shown. That seems to me to be highly relevant to considerations. It was an appalling crime; there is no doubt about that, but one does really need to think—as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has reminded us—about the maturity of the brain, which is not properly completed by the age of 10, and is only still partly completed by the age of 14. There is substantial evidence that one Government after another absolutely refuse to recognise.
Ten is very young. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, let us think back to when we were 10—I find that particularly difficult at my age. One bears in mind one’s children or one’s grandchildren, how they behaved and the extent to which they really understood, not perhaps between right and wrong—I would hope they did—but the consequences of what they have done or might do. That seems to be something that is gained later in life than the age of 10.
One point that noble Lords might be concerned about is what would happen to a 10 year-old if they committed a really serious offence, particularly murder, with which I have been twice concerned. The fact is that Section 45 of the Children Act 1989 would send such a child who was a danger to him or herself or to others to secure accommodation. I am a patron of an admirable secure accommodation unit in Exeter. Every child in that unit has at least two carers, and some who are particularly troublesome have three. They are properly educated and looked after in a way that would of course happen to a child convicted of an offence; they would be sent nowadays to secure accommodation.
Mary Bell, however, was sent to prison. The very humane Member of this House, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, arranged that the Bulger killers should not go on to an adult prison; they in fact left at the age of 18. Noble Lords might be interested to know the reason why I gave anonymity to those two young men. I received evidence from the police, sitting as a judge, that there were vigilantes out there determined not just to injure them, but to kill them. There was substantial evidence that there were groups of vigilantes in various parts of the country. That was why I gave them anonymity. I ask the Minister to reflect on what the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I have said: 10 is very young.