Parents, not the state, are parents

Sir, - Early Years Minister Mark McDonald defends the raising of the age of criminal responsibility from eight to 12, saying that: “It marks a major step forward in fulfilling a promise to our own young people, to be genuine corporate parents by treating them as children first and acknowledging that in most cases, it is unmet needs which give rise to harmful deeds.”

Permit me to correct him. My wife and I are the parents of my children.

The government is not any sort of “parent” to my children.

My children do not belong to the government, and they are unaware of any promise made to them by Mr McDonald.

In telling my children that in most cases “unmet needs” give rise to “harmful deeds”, he invites my children to blame me for their misbehaviour.

The humanistic SNP government tends towards the view that bad behaviour, of adults or children, is a matter of mental malfunction rather than moral malevolence, thus dispensing with personal responsibility.

Someone else is always to blame. And they blame someone else, and so on, ad infinitum.

Mr McDonald claims that children want this change in the age of criminal responsibility.

Has he conducted a

referendum of eightyear-olds?

Is it not utterly ridiculous to suggest that children are capable of analysing the complex issues involved?

Is asking children to determine criminal law part of treating them as children?

Richard Lucas 11 Broomyknowe, Colinton, Edinburgh.