Bid to raise minimum age of criminal responsibility formally fails

A bid at Stormont to raise the age at which a child can be prosecuted for a crime in Northern Ireland has formally failed.

Unionist parties opposed to increasing the age from 10 to 14 in most cases had deployed a veto known as a petition of concern.

That meant any subsequent vote required cross-community support from a majority of unionists and nationalists.

Sinn Féin, Alliance and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) had suggested raising the age as part of amendments to the Justice Bill going through the assembly.

They said the proposals were progressive and based on advice from the United Nations and other experts.

On Tuesday, the legislation returned to the assembly floor for a vote after a required 14-day consideration period, triggered after the petition of concern was signed by 30 assembly members (MLAs) from at least two parties.

The result saw 32 nationalist MLAs vote for it, while 34 unionist MLAs voted no.

16 Alliance MLAs also voted in favour of the amendment, but as they are designated as "Other" in the assembly, their votes did not count towards the threshold for cross-community consent.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and four Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MLAs had supported the petition of concern, arguing that increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) in all but the most serious offences, like rape and murder, as a step too far.

MLAs in favour of the change branded Tuesday's votes "pointless" and a waste of time, since the use of the petition of concern meant the legislation would not pass.

A separate proposal by People Before Profit's Gerry Carroll to raise the age to 16 also failed.

MACR refers to the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

This is the youngest age at which a person can be arrested and charged with committing a crime.

Ten is one of the lowest ages anywhere in the world.

Like Northern Ireland, it is also 10 in England and Wales.

In Scotland it is 12 - the same as in the Republic of Ireland - but provision has been made for exceptional cases, with criminal responsibility for the most serious offences being set at 10.

The UN body which monitors the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has urged countries to raise their MACRs to at least 14.

In 2023, the Department of Justice found there was "strong support" for raising the age from 10 to 14.

Previous efforts to examine the legislation failed to attract sufficient political support.

Introduced as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the measure was designed as a way to safeguard minority rights in Northern Ireland's power-sharing assembly.

If a petition of concern is presented to the assembly Speaker, any motion or amendment will need cross-community support.

In such cases, a vote on proposed legislation will only pass if supported by a weighted majority (60%) of members voting, including at least 40% of each of the nationalist and unionist designations present and voting.

Effectively this means - provided enough MLAs from a particular community agree - that community can exercise a veto over the assembly's decisions.

A notable example of it being used in the past include when a majority of Northern Ireland Assembly members voted in favour of same-sex marriage for the first time, but the motion was blocked after the DUP deployed a petition of concern in 2015.

Over recent years the use of this mechanism has led to concern that it was being used in a way that departs from its intended purpose as a cross-community safeguard.