Ed Balls criticises children's commissioner's Bulger comments
Ed Balls criticises the children's commissioner's comments about the James Bulger case
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Monday, 15, Mar 2010 03:52
By Richard James.
Children's secretary Ed Balls has described comments made by England's children's commissioner about the conviction of two boys for the murder of James Bulger as "ill advised".
In an interview with the Times newspaper on Saturday, Maggie Atkinson said the pair should not have been prosecuted due to the fact that at the age of the crime they were only ten years old and were too young to understand their actions.
Dr Atkinson also called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 12 - a demand later rejected by the Ministry of Justice.
Her comments sparked fierce criticism from James' mother Denise Fergus who called for her to be sacked and Mr Balls has now also condemned the comments.
Claiming his sympathies were with Mrs Fergus and her family, the minister declared; "On the issue of criminal responsibility, I disagree with the children's commissioner. On her linking of the views on criminal responsibility with the Bulger case - I thought that was ill advised.
"I think not just for Mrs Bulger [sic], but for many people, the scars of what was done to James Bulger are very deep.
"And I think it would be quite wrong not to have had criminal proceedings for the children who did that to James Bulger."
The children's secretary said though he did not want to enter into a situation where any child was labelled as "intrinsically evil".
The government has come under increasing pressure to reveal why one of the boys convicted of killing James, Jon Venables, was recently returned to prison.
Venables and Robert Thompson were found guilty of murder after snatching two-year-old James from a Merseyside shopping centre in 1993. The pair are said to have walked him two miles to a railway line where they then beat him to death.
They were given new identities upon their release eight years later.