Not at all. Not at all. My take on it: I've seen and spoken with Matt Jukes about this, from South Wales Police; I have seen the justice impact assessment; I've seen the research that's been fed through from New Zealand; and I've seen our own response to a freedom of information request and the papers that the CPS put into the review that you mentioned earlier in 2007. I would be very surprised if we were to prosecute anything other than low single figures a year, if that much. If that much. We may have more referrals from the police, but I doubt it would be double the figure we prosecute, even. So, you're talking small numbers. Now, small numbers—and we might not have any. Okay? It depends. Obviously, if there's a really good awareness-raising campaign, you make it less likely. And, for us, prosecution—it's not the first port of call here at all. There are out-of-court disposals and there are all sorts of diversions that you will have discussed, and I know you've discussed, with the police and the police and crime commissioner. So, the numbers will be very small, which means we would be able to keep a clear track on those and, obviously, we would wish to keep the situation under review, and we'd reach a period of time after whatever—12, 18 months, maybe 24 months—where we'd look back to see how we are doing. And I'd like to think that we will be doing that in consultation with interested parties and stakeholders. We do this already with certain types of offences. We have what we call local scrutiny involvement panels. So, for offences such as racially aggravated offending, whether it's criminal damage or offence against the person, we will bring together interested parties, by which I mean people from outside the CPS, quite often third sector agencies that represent vulnerable groups. We'd bring them in and look through the cases. So, we open our books, show them our cases, and we have a very frank discussion. We involve the police in that as well. That, in turn, helps us shape and improve the way that we prosecute these cases and I can foresee that, after this legislation came in, we might get 18 months, two years down the road, and I can see us sitting in a room with some of the cases we've prosecuted, maybe cases we've decided not to prosecute, with the police and interested parties from both sides, to have a discussion about how we're doing with it all. And I'd like to think that the Welsh Government would be involved in that as well.
That's really helpful to know because, of course, one of the difficulties of dealing with the culture change, which is what the Minister's effectively after here, is that we are still talking about it in the context of criminal legislation. It's nobody's fault; that's just how it is. And what I'm hearing from you is that the chances of somebody who's currently protected by the defence and is not part of a bigger case where there's serial smacking or other difficulties in a family, for example—the chances of them getting to you in the first place are pretty low, and then the chances of them passing even the current public interest tests are pretty low. In which case, my question is: why are we bothering with this law rather than concentrating on a new piece of law, possibly through the civil system, which would achieve the culture change better? Maybe that's not a question you feel that you can answer, but you can see why I'm asking the question.
I can attempt an answer. I follow entirely where you're going. I agree, the chances are pretty low, but they're greater than they are presently. In other words, there is a greater degree of protection for children, and I think the value that would derive from this legislation is the message that it sends out. I go back to what I was saying to you right at the start, about the evolution of the law, and the way we've seen many other countries around the world adopt a very similar approach to that being proposed by the Welsh Government is, in my view, an evolution of the law. So, yes, there may not be many more prosecutions, but there won't be fewer than there are presently, because there's a greater degree of protection for children.
Okay, that's really helpful, thank you.