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Coroners and Justice Bill

The purpose of this amendment is to add aback the term "developmental immaturity", which was included by the Law Commission but then excluded by the Government. In my view, on this occasion the Government were right. The evidence was that in a case where developmental immaturity is such that it ought to provide a partial defence, it would be covered by the term "recognised medical condition". Furthermore, if it were to be included as a separate head, I can see no reason at all why this amendment—or certainly a later one—should include it simply for those under the age of 18. Why should a person of 18 with a mental age of, say, 10 be entitled to the defence when a person of, say, 40 would not be? It does not make sense. That leads to another difficulty. If a person of 40 with a mental age of 10 is entitled to a partial defence on the grounds of developmental immaturity, what about a child of 10 with a mental age of 10? As has been pointed out, he could not rely on the old rule that a child of 10 is incapable of committing a crime. The child of 10 would be guilty of murder but the man of 40 with a mental age of 10 would not. That seems an absurd result. The less we think about developmental immaturity, the safer ground we shall be on.