Dominic Casciani

I suspect what will happen is if this sentence is changed and the boys are given a form of youth custody, I think there will then be applications from sections of the media, which maybe the BBC will be part of as well, saying we want to review the anonymity there.

But I don't think that will happen before the sentencing thing is dealt with.

Where are we with that?

I think this is some way off.

This is a really, really complicated issue, and I think it's also a very complicated issue within the Labour Party as well, because the age of criminal responsibility was lowered by Tony Blair's government to the point it is at now.

So any move to increase it, put it more in line with some of our European comparators,

I think that's going to be a bit of a debate within the ruling Labour Party if that's going to happen.

And I think also there'll be a political optics issue there for any government who actually wants to rebalance that or feel that it has to rebalance that because it's quite a difficult thing to sell.

if you think about it in political terms you can imagine the kind of criticisms of any government that will be made by changing that because quite frankly you will have some people who would be um prosecuted today for an offense and wouldn't be tomorrow of course on the other side you've got all the arguments which we've touched on today that you know some children develop at different rates to others and they they they may be involved in crime as very very young teenagers um

because of complex issues in their lives, particularly where they've been victims of abuse themselves.

And they may be able to move on if they're not criminalised.

But that's a whole PhD, Adam.