My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was kind enough to mention me, and perhaps I may add a footnote to what he said about Scotland and the measure that deals with emergency workers. Of course, an assault, in both the law of Scotland and the law of England, is a crime, and in a sense you could say that it was not necessary to pass that measure at all because any court when presented with evidence of an assault would pass an appropriate sentence if the individual was convicted.
However, the value of the measure, which got a lot of publicity, was its deterrent effect. After all, the last thing that one wants is to have the assault committed. The Government in Scotland were trying to reduce the very unfortunate crescendo of assaults on emergency workers—firemen, ambulance people and so on—and to some extent the measure appears to have had that effect. Therefore, the deterrent effect is as valuable as any sentencing. As I said, in an ideal world, if something was a crime, the individual tempted to do the act described as criminal would refrain from doing it. It is because of the deterrent effect that I think there is a good deal of force behind the amendment.