Mr. Deagl?n ? Briain:

I can address it, as I have been involved in discussions at the Council of Europe on exactly how to give effect to the non-punishment principle. As members will see from the general scheme, our preference is for a prohibition on prosecution for immigration offences that are inherent in the fact of having been trafficked, but that is as far as we go. Other offences will be left to the prosecutorial guidelines that the Director of Public Prosecutions has produced. This is a difficult question. We have examined other member states. The UK has a system that is complicated but still involves someone making case-by-case decisions. We could not contemplate a blanket prohibition on prosecution for serious offences of sexual assault and so on. We believe that is best left to the professional competence and independent judgment of the DPP.