Lord Davies of Gower (Con)

I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for that. I do not dispute that fact; I quite accept it. There are rare but tragic cases, such as the murder of James Bulger, where a criminal justice response is unavoidable and undoubtedly in the public interest. I respectfully suggest that international comparisons cited in this debate are far from straightforward and can sometimes serve to confuse matters. In fact, certain countries are now moving in the opposite direction. Sweden, for example, is proposing to lower its age in response to gang exploitation of children who know that they cannot be prosecuted. That underlines a key point. If the threshold is set too high, it can incentivise adults to use children as instruments of crime. It is also worth noting that, although Scotland recently raised the age of criminal responsibility, Scotland’s experience should not justify this amendment. Even after deciding the age of criminal responsibility should be raised from eight years old, Scotland raised the threshold to 12 and not to 14. The Scottish Government also retained extensive non-criminal powers to respond to serious harmful behaviour. This amendment would go significantly further without clear evidence that such a leap would improve outcomes for children or public safety. It is worth noting that a number of Commonwealth countries retain the doctrine that a child is considered incapable of wrongdoing, which was abolished in England and Wales by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. In many of those jurisdictions, the standard age of responsibility is similar to ours. Australia, for example, has a standard age of criminal responsibility of 10 years old, but a rebuttable presumption exists up to the age of 14. However, I should also stress that, simply because other countries may have higher ages than England and Wales, that is not, in and of itself, a justification to alter ours. We must ensure that the age of responsibility here is suitable for our needs—