Lammy: Raise Age of Criminal Responsibility 10 to 14?
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy is considering raising the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales from 10 to as high as 14, The Times reported yesterday. The government is “eyeing” Scotland’s threshold, under which children cannot be charged with criminal offences before age 12, as a possible starting point. The announcement lands as the first substantive domestic-policy intervention of the cabinet-ring-fence week. The current threshold of 10 is among the lowest in Europe and below the UN-recommended minimum of 14; raising it would align England and Wales with the majority of European jurisdictions.
The Council of Europe and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child have repeatedly criticised the threshold. The proposal sits across the Home Office, Justice and Education briefs, has implications for prosecuting violent youth offenders such as the Southport killer, and would require legislation. The Lammy intervention is part of a broader pattern of substantive policy announcements through the week intended to shift the political news cycle away from the leadership question and toward delivery: Reeves’s supermarket-cap push today, Alexander’s HS2 reset yesterday, and the Lammy criminal-responsibility proposal all share the structural feature of taking a difficult question and surfacing it on the government’s terms. PMQs at noon today will test whether the cabinet ring-fence holds.