Bill – a good and accurate point. The pilot will be ‘on the back foot’ because the onus will be on her to establish a defence.
The point I have been trying to make all along is this: The pilot was in exactly the same position under the ‘old’ rules. She might have been blissfully ignorant of the fact, but that did not change the nature of the offence.
And BTW: there is nothing “proposed” or “would be” about this. Strict liability is here, now. The withdrawal of notice of motion to disallow sets in concrete, at least until gaunty’s nebulous “we” identify the “agreed” (by whom?) SL amendments. (I would have thought that if the Government “agreed” that there was any offence in the regulations that should be a ‘mens rea’ offence rather than strict liability, the Government would have made it so.)