Lawyers are backing Labour calls for criminality age to increase to 14

By REBECCA CAMBER, CRIME AND SECURITY EDITOR Published: 00:04, 29 June 2026 | Updated: 00:17, 29 June 2026 Children who break the law should not be considered to be criminals unless they are 14 or over – four years older than at present, according to lawyers. The Government is deciding whether to change the law so that children under 14 would no longer face arrest, charges or prosecution for any crime. Raising the age of criminal responsibility from ten in this way would pave the way for Labour to take a more liberal approach to child criminals. The age of criminality was last raised in 1963, from eight to ten. The Bar Council, representing 18,000 barristers in England and Wales, says hundreds of cases against offenders should not be pursued because criminalisation before 14 is not 'a just response'. Last month, Justice Secretary David Lammy indicated that Labour would review the law if the reforms were backed by the Bar Council. But the group's recommendation comes just days after police warned that children increasingly feature in investigations, including in cases of terrorism and serious organised crime. Had the age of criminality been 14, child killers such as Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who murdered toddler James Bulger at the age of ten in 1993, and Mary Bell, who at the same age strangled two young boys in 1968, would not have been prosecuted. More recently, two boys were sentenced for the murder of 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai in Wolverhampton in 2023 when they were both 12. Monsters: Jon Venables (pictured) and Robert Thompson were ten when they abducted and murdered toddler James Bulger in 1993 Venables was jailed alongside Robert Thompson (pictured) - when they were both aged 10 - after snatching James from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, in February 1993 In 2022, Britain's youngest terrorist, who was seduced by neo-Nazi ideology at 11, was convicted of downloading bomb-making manuals after boasting that he was plotting a Columbine-style school massacre at the age of 13. This month, National Crime Agency boss Graeme Biggar told a conference of law-enforcement heads from the Five Eyes nations of the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand: 'We are seeing more young people appearing more in a wider range of crimes... often as victims, but also as perpetrators. This is a real concern.' He warned that children were being lured through social media and gaming platforms into sadistic online groups, sexual extortion, drug gangs and cyber crime, adding: 'Those ages are just getting younger and younger.' The head of UK Counter-Terrorism, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, told the summit that children aged ten were being referred to Prevent, the Government's de-radicalisation programme, as teachers feared they were being drawn to terrorism. He said: 'It is alarming, the growth of young people coming through as potential perpetrators. We arrested 40 children last year for terrorism-related offences in the UK. That's one in five of our arrests. Ten years ago, that was one in 20. We've investigated children as young as 12.' But the Bar Council report claims that treating children as criminals 'funnels them towards further crime and prison', and they should be put on 'diversionary programmes' instead. It says research suggests child offenders have more neurological and learning disabilities and developmental disorders, lower intellectual functioning and are more likely to comply in interview and make false confessions. Young black and ethnic-minority offenders and those in care fare worse because the justice system 'too readily treats them as inherently prone to criminality'. In the year to March 2025, 1,590 children aged ten to 14 were convicted, but only 22 received sentences of immediate custody. Kirsty Brimelow KC, chairman of the Bar Council, said: 'Bringing children into the criminal justice system is more likely to result in further offending.' The Law Commission, the Law Society of England and Wales and the Children's Commissioner for England back its recommendation. But Shadow Lord Chancellor Nick Timothy said: 'Labour must rule out raising the age of criminal responsibility. A girl was recently gang-raped by teenagers. One was 13. This would see criminals like them get no punishment.' No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 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