Police and Justice Bill

I rise to speak to Amendments Nos. 191L, 191M and 191P which address the issue that all children under the age of 17 are eligible for the live link direction. Having listened to the Minister, I am aware that there is a lot of common ground here and we welcome further discussions. However, I shall go through the argument briefly so as to lay the ground. The purpose of the amendments is to introduce consistency, clarity and common sense into the clause. Under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, witnesses under the age of 18 are eligible for special measures on account of their age alone. It also recognises that their youth may make it necessary to make special measure directions so that the quality of their evidence can be maximised. However, the new clause does not include this provision for all child defendants. Instead it inserts an extra criterion that a child’s level of intellectual ability or social functioning must compromise their ability to participate effectively in the proceedings. We would argue that the criteria for ordering special measures for all witnesses, including the defendant, should be the same. Therefore we would change the age from 18 years old to 17 because that is the age under which children are eligible for special measures as witnesses on the ground of age under Section 16 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act. We also propose that the additional requirement regarding intellectual ability or social functioning be removed for children under 17 because it is simply not fair and may also force the court to make difficult determinations in all youth cases on the child defendant’s level of intellectual ability or social functioning. This in turn could lead to expert evidence in some cases, which would be costly, lengthy and enormously complicating. Indeed, if questions arise on whether a child’s level of intellectual ability or social functioning is compromised, it is questionable whether the child should be involved in a trial at all. A video link may indeed help a child to be less intimidated by the process of giving evidence, but it will not ease the difficulties for a child in participating effectively in a trial or understandingthe proceedings and their gravity, such as making decisions and giving instructions to his or her legal representatives. There will be some children for whom this is and will remain impossible. As I have said, we would welcome further discussions with the Minister on this, so we regard these amendments as probing in nature.