Testing The Waters…

It was inevitable that, once the dust settled after the election, various pressure groups would be jostling for position to see who could get the ear of the ‘liberals’ among the coalition and so advance their agenda.

The age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 14 to better protect the "truly young", one of the country's leading barristers has said.

Paul Mendelle QC, the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said the current limit of ten is "awfully young" and runs the risk of a child being prosecuting for crimes they are too immature to understand.

So, don’t prosecute them then. After all, this comes on the back of the furor over the two boys prosecuted for the attempted rape of another child. And that was a decision taken by the CPS.

There, job done. No need to meddle with anything, right?

Maggie Atkinson, the Children's Commissioner for England, said the age of criminal responsibility should be raised and Mr Mendelle has now added his voice to those demands.

He said: "Should we look at the system? Yes of course we should look at the system.
"We have almost the lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe…

Ah. I suspect that’s the real reason for the demands…

It seems the government is having none of this:

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: "The Government believes that children are old enough to differentiate between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing at age 10."

Indeed.

But these people won’t go away…