(272)  CORRECTION: AGE OF MALE CONSENT STILL 16

Sir Gerald Gordon has withdrawn his argument that an effect of Webster v Dominick, the case ridding Scots law of the crime of shameless indecency, is to abolish 16 as the age of male consent in Scotland (see Nos 243 and 269), drawing attention to section 13(5) of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995, which makes it an offence to commit as well as to procure a homosexual act with a person under 16.  Professor Chris Gane (Aberdeen), one of the drafters of the proposed Criminal Law Code, was reported as saying: We are left with a statutory offence which is based on a common law offence which the courts (rightly in my view) have effectively abolished.  It is quite unclear how the courts should now interpret the statutory reference to ‘shameless indecency’.” (The Herald