Children ‘shouldn’t be held responsible for crimes before 15’

on the Rights of the Child called on the UK to raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 12. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland it is currently set at ten.

“I think [the Scottish Government] needs to go further, faster,” Mr Adamson said. “The UN committee was very clear... that 12 was the absolute minimum that was internationally acceptable.

“I’ve been spending time in some of the Nordic countries that we like to compare ourselves to, and generally they set theirs at about 15. I think it needs to be somewhere between 12 and 18.”

Mr Adamson said “you could argue” that the age of criminal responsibility should be as high as 18, but he did not have a “fixed view”. More than 40 countries set the age above 12, including Columbia, Brazil, Portugal, Sweden, Iceland and Norway.

“It strikes me as one of these things that is really strange, and really doesn’t sit with the many positive things in Scotland,” the Commissioner added.

“It doesn’t sit with where Scotland wants to be or sees itself. I think most people would be quite shocked to hear that we’re the lowest in the world still, and that 12, which the government is putting forward as a solution, still puts us the lowest in the world.

“We go from being absolutely last to jointly at the bottom. I think that probably would surprise a lot of people that we are so out of step.”