Dr Rhian Croke, Policy Advocacy and Strategic Litigation Lead, Children’s Legal Centre Wales
Last week, the House of Lords debated two pieces of legislation that go to the heart of how we understand childhood, maturity, and responsibility in the UK.
The first is the UK Crime and Policing Bill, where amendments have again been proposed to raise the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales. The second is the UK Children’s Well Being and Schools Bill, which now includes an amendment banning children under the age of 16 from accessing social media.
Taken separately, each debate is significant. Taken together, they expose a profound inconsistency in how our legal system treats children — and in the messages political leaders communicate about when a child is considered capable of making decisions, bearing responsibility, and facing punishment.
Children’s brains are still developing
In an opinion piece for the Guardian on restricting social media use for under-16s, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch made the following argument:
“Children’s brains are still developing. Their impulse control, emotional regulation and ability to assess risk are not the same as an adult’s. That is why we have age limits on alcohol, a legal age of consent and safeguarding requirements in schools. To most people this is common sense. And yet, in one crucial area, we have decided to suspend that logic entirely.”
Read in isolation, this statement sounds like a powerful case for raising the age of criminal responsibility. In fact, it is almost word-for-word arguments recently made by children’s rights advocates, Senedd Members, and senior judges.
But Badenoch was not referring to criminal responsibility at all. She was speaking in support of restricting children’s access to social media.
And therein lies the problem.
Two Bills — and two very different thresholds for childhood
Under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the House of Lords voted decisively that children under 16 are insufficiently mature to manage the risks of social media: risks relating to mental health, peer pressure, exploitative design, and exposure to harmful content. The response? Protection. Restriction. Safeguarding.
Yet under the Crime and Policing Bill, there remains strong resistance to raising the age of criminal responsibility — which in England and Wales remains at just 10 years old, the lowest in Europe. And just last week, the UK Government expressed their continued opposition to raising it.
Placed side by side, these positions are impossible to reconcile.
So, we are left with a deeply uncomfortable position:
- A 15-year-old is deemed too developmentally immature to safely navigate Instagram or TikTok.
- A 10-year-old, however, is deemed mature enough to be arrested, prosecuted, criminalised, strip-searched and, in some cases, deprived of their liberty.
So, if the justification for banning social media for under-16s is based on established developmental science — children’s impulse control, emotional regulation, ability to assess risk, and heightened susceptibility to peer influence — why does that logic apply online but not to some of the most vulnerable children in contact with the criminal justice system?
It is striking that many of the same political voices who emphasise developmental vulnerability when discussing screens and smartphones fall silent when confronted with the reality of children being drawn into the criminal justice system at primary-school age.
Mixed messages — and real harm
This inconsistency is not merely theoretical. It has real consequences.
First, it sends confused and contradictory messages to children themselves. On the one hand, the state tells children they are not mature enough to make decisions about online engagement until 16. On the other, it insists they are mature enough at 10 to be held criminally responsible in ways that can shape the rest of their lives.
Second, criminalisation carries long-term harm: police contact, criminal records, exclusion from education, stigma, and trauma — often for behaviour that is closely linked to unmet needs rather than criminal intent.
Third, it reveals a deeper problem in how we legislate for children: maturity is invoked when it justifies protection and restriction but ignored when punishment is at stake.
Senior judges, Senedd Members and children’s rights advocates have repeatedly warned that the current age of criminal responsibility is incompatible with modern understanding of child development and have long argued that criminalisation at 10 is not only ineffective, but actively harmful.[i] Please see similar evidence I wrote in a blog on this subject matter in 2025, compelling and clear arguments put forward in Senedd debate just last week, and by senior judges in December.
Final reflections
The debate unfolding exposes an uncomfortable truth. Many senior decision-makers are increasingly willing to protect children from harm when that harm is digital, commercial or reputational — but remain far less willing to protect them from the blunt force of the criminal justice system.
If we truly accept that children’s brains are still developing — as politicians now readily argue in the context of social media — then we cannot continue to justify criminal responsibility at 10 without contradiction.
Raising the age of criminal responsibility does not mean excusing harmful behaviour. It means responding to it in ways that are child-centred, proportionate, and grounded in developmental reality: through welfare, education, mental health support and restorative approaches — not criminal courts.
As these two Bills make their passage, Parliament faces a simple but unavoidable question:
If a child is too young to manage the risks of social media until 16, how can we justify treating a 10-year-old as criminally responsible?
Until that question is answered honestly, our approach to childhood will remain incoherent — protective in principle, punitive in practice, and profoundly unfair to the very children the law claims to serve.
The Children’s Legal Centre Wales is calling to raise the age of criminal responsibility in line with international children’s rights standards.
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END NOTE
[i] The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has repeatedly criticised the UK’s low age of criminal responsibility, and again in their Concluding Observations 2023, urged the UK State party to raise the age.
In Wales, the Commission on Justice in 2019, also recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility. It’s time the UK Government gives Wales, devolved powers for criminal justice as recommended by the Silk Commission in 2011, Thomas Commission in 2019 and the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales in 2024.Wales could then ensure criminal justice legislation is aligned with international children’s rights standards and become compliant with the requirements of Welsh specific children’s rights legislation.
Since early devolution, Wales has strongly promoted a Child First and Children’s Rights Approach. From the All-Wales Youth Offending Strategy that communicated the importance of treating children as children first and offenders second, to the Youth Justice Blue Print and most recently the Youth Justice Blue Prevention Framework, Wales has been committed to Child First and Children’s Rights Principles. The legal age of criminal responsibility is a contradiction to these long-term developments that have been embraced in Wales.
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