Member

It is a sad and regrettable fact that some children commit crimes. Some of those crimes will be trivial—mere naughtiness, such as breaking windows—but some will be very serious indeed. Against that background, it is important to say that the Government are very conscious that many of those children are themselves victims—sometimes of domestic abuse or sheer neglect, or even, as my noble friend said earlier, just poverty. All too often, they are victims of much worse things than that. We believe that keeping the age of criminal responsibility at 10 gives the criminal justice system the flexibility to deal with those very sensitive cases in a way that seeks to achieve a balance between looking after damaged children and putting the interests of their victims high up the list of priorities—because their victims are a very real issue.