My Lords, I think that we want to achieve the same thing here. It is a question of whether the existing wording achieves what the Minister has outlined. We do not want to penalise or take to court any innocent person who is
trapped in this way. That is not our intention and clearly it is not the Government’s intention. However, I do not know how you can prove that someone genuinely did not know that something had ivory in it. I have a feeling that we are trying to prove a negative here, which in terms of enforcement will be quite difficult.
Therefore, we are in the game of asking how you prove that somebody ought to know and how you prove that somebody could not possibly have known. It is quite unusual to have a get-out clause in a Bill that says, “If you didn’t know about it, we’ll let you off”. With most legislation—it might be banning smoking in cars—it is not normally a defence to say, “I didn’t know”. Equally, I find it odd that the Bill is introducing a situation where someone can say, “I didn’t know, so maybe I should be let off on this occasion”.
I think that we want to achieve the same thing; I just do not feel that the wording here delivers what the Minister is trying to get at, and I would like to reflect a little more on his response. I hope that, in return, he will listen to what I am saying because, as I said, I am not sure that this wording delivers his exact intent. Maybe there is another way through this but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.