Ms Kate Mulkerrins:

I might add that Deputy Hourigan correctly identified that the exception to that is in intimidation cases, where there has to evidence of repeated conduct to show there was no mistaken but honest belief that it was harmless conduct. This legislation, as I read it, is a sort of hybrid between the public order Act and section 10. It seeks to merge those two items because the series of events is intimidatory in a public order or protest situation. I absolutely see the legislative difficulty in drafting something, but we are trying simply to show the policing difficulty, on a practical level, of separating that warning from the then full offence.

The Chair made a good point about whether it can be recorded, but even if it can be recorded in a geographically dispersed place in real time, we will need access to mobility devices in a potentially fraught environment, although I have no right to talk about policing experience given I have none. It will involve relying on that previous warning in a defence where there is a stated defence of no reasonable belief that an offence was being committed in the new location, and then relying on the warning in the old location to be relevant to the new location.