Can I give you two examples? One of the implications is this—and it's fairly obvious but it's still worth stressing—that the removal of the defence would mean that there would be more cases that would pass the evidential stage in Wales than there would be in England, because the defence would still apply there. That, therefore, raises issues in particular in terms of awareness of criminal offending for people from England who travel to Wales, because it's fairly evident that there would be a defence available in England that is not available in Wales. One of the examples that we talked about was if you consider a family on its way from England into Wales, travelling to Barry Island for a holiday, and troublesome children in the back of the car, harsh words and a small smack on the leg delivered while they're on the M4 going past Bristol would be subject to a defence. By the time we come over to this side of the water, there would be no such defence for the same journey, for the same act. And so, there are issues there in terms of the awareness of members of the public. The second example that I'll give you is that we already have within the United Kingdom a certain degree of divergence of laws, and the example I'll give to you is this: drink driving. In England and Wales, the limit for having micrograms of alcohol in your breath is 35 µg in 100 ml of breath. Across the border in Scotland, it drops to 22 µg. So, the same act—. As you drive into Scotland, you're probably okay to drive if you've got 34 µg; by the time you get into Scotland, you won't be. And the consequences for you are significant, because of course it's an offence in Scotland, and not an offence in England, but the punishment, namely disqualification, applies everywhere in the United Kingdom. So, we already have a degree of divergence of law, and the CPS recognises this. In our code, we have a specific provision that takes account of the potential divergence of Welsh law. We will issue policy guidance and charging standards to reflect any changes as they arise. And we think that we are sufficiently flexible to take account of that.
Okay. So, would you see the necessity for a memorandum of understanding, for instance, or it being useful in these circumstances, or are you quite satisfied that the current guidance code would cover that?
Well, it's yet to move from a Bill into an Act, so we'd need to make sure that happened. We know there would be a period of time, perhaps as much as two years, or maybe a little more, while that takes place. There will be a further series of awareness raising. We have strategic implementation groups—Iwan sits on that group. So, we would build ourselves up to come up with the appropriate guidance according to the circumstances. In terms of how we'd approach it within the Crown Prosecution Service in Cymru-Wales, my approach would be along the lines of working with Kwame and his colleagues to make sure that the guidance that we issue nationally suits both England and Wales. And when it comes to the practical application of the legislation in Wales, we would almost certainly work on the basis that the number of offences—and we might want to get into the number of potential offences, but my take on it is the number of offences is likely to be very small and we would probably have two or three specialists trained in this so that any case that comes through goes to people who've got a close network and can talk with each other—
And that would be primarily around the public interest issue.