UK Borders Bill

Before the noble Lord, Lord Judd, replies, I point out that the Minister has not dealt with an extremely important point that I made. He mentioned certainty twice. If the charge against a person is that on a date between X and Y he did such and such, the court has to be satisfied that the offence was committed between those two dates. That is the burden of proof of the prosecution. If the charge is that on a date between 1 January 2005 and 1 January 2006 someone committed a particular offence, the court not only has to be satisfied that the offence was committed, but that it was committed between those two dates. I was suggesting that, for the purposes of the amendment, you could have certainty if you took the latest of the dates as the date on which the offence was committed. The person—who may not come before the courts until 2008 and may become an adult in the meanwhile, but who was definitely a child on 1 January 2006—using the second of the dates in the bracket that the court had to consider, would then be covered by exception 2. I suggested that as a way around the uncertainty that was created for a particular class of offences as set out by the Minister in repeating more or less word for word what was said by his honourable friend Liam Byrne in another place. There is a solution to this, and I would be grateful if the Minister would consider it.