It's straightforward: if someone comes to this country and commits an offence here—by this country, I'd say England or Wales; I'd treat them as one for these purposes—if someone comes from abroad and commits an offence that isn't an offence in their country, but is an offence here, then I'm afraid that ignorance of the law is no defence. So, raising awareness is important, and I saw, and I was pleased to see, that the media publicity surrounding this proposed legislation, which is now going through, reached as far afield as New York and had widespread media coverage across England and Wales, and I think the Government would be well placed here to take advantage of that willingness of the media to explore something, which is potentially divisive, and I think you've probably seen some of that. Anything like that is a good story, and a good story gets out there, which means you're more likely to make people aware of it.
Okay, thank you. We've got some questions now on the unintended consequences from Siân Gwenllian.
Yes, we've discussed some of these already, but, for example, under the new law, or the proposed law, would one unintended consequence be that, if someone living in Wales who can't use the reasonable punishment defence—would their life prospects be different compared to those people in England, who will be able to use that defence? I think you've mentioned that in your written evidence.
Yes. Okay. A simple answer: if somebody in Wales is convicted—so, if it goes towards the end of the spectrum that is serious, which results in a prosecution—. It may be—the sort of circumstance I can see happening here is somebody who takes a principled stand and declines any form of out-of-court disposal and says, 'Prosecute me'. We probably would end up prosecuting, because it's a relatively serious offence. So, let's say it comes to court and let's say they end up being convicted of assaulting their child—in circumstances that would not have happened in England—then they would have a criminal conviction they wouldn't have in England, and that, inevitably, has an impact upon their life prospects. But I think, along the road there, there would have been an element of choice.