B

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 10 November 2025

Debate

Crime and Policing Bill

Contribution

In the spirit of Committee, I wonder whether I might challenge the noble Lord a little on this epidemic of child criminality to which he so graphically referred. I think we should park these arguably very rare cases of child homicide outside a debate on anti-social behaviour, but would he agree with me that, when it comes to fisticuffs—what would be common assault—or even theft, we know that quite small children in every home in the country are capable of fisticuffs with each other, between siblings, and taking things that are not their own? But is not a crucial difference in our response to those children? Anti-social behaviour on the playing fields of Eton rarely ends up anywhere near the criminal justice system, but looked-after children in particular are more likely to be reported to the police and end up criminalised at a very early age. So does the noble Lord agree that children in, for example, England and Wales are no more malign than children in Scotland, where the age of responsibility is 14? We should look to ourselves as adult society and our responses to these vulnerable children.

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