Any person who engages in sexual intercourse with a person under the age 16 could be prosecuted. However this therefore means that even sexual intercourse between willing people of a similar age (i.e. A 16-year-old and a 15-year-old) could result in the older person being liable for prosecution for committing a sexual offence. Because of this, when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 was created, separate sections of the act were put in place to be used on how to appropriately prosecute a person who had sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16, depending on exactly how young a person under the age of 16 was at time the sexual intercourse took place. This therefore maintained a "two-tier" cut off age system regarding sexual intercourse when it involved a person under the age of 16. Currently this depends on whether a younger person was Under 16 or Under 13 at the time of the sexual intercourse taking place, with the latter being automatically overall illegal, and the former still being illegal, but with defences due to the younger person's older age, more flexibility in sentencing and flexibility overall whether to prosecute or not based on individual case.