Liability of children

So far as the criminal liability of children is concerned, s 34 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 provides that ‘the rebuttable presumption of criminal law that a child aged 10 or over is incapable of committing an offence is hereby abolished’. The way in which this has been interpreted has been that a child of 10 or over (but under the age of 14 years) will not be able to plead that he or she should be acquitted because he or she did not know that what he or she did was seriously wrong.