Page:Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (UKPGA 1974-53 qp).pdf/5

4c. 53 : court or person authorised thereunder to award a punishment in respect of any offence);
 * (b) any proceedings under any Act previously in force corresponding to any of the Acts mentioned in paragraph (a) above;
 * (c) any proceedings under any corresponding enactment or law applying to a force, other than a home force, to which section 4 of the Visiting Forces (British Commonwealth) Act 1933 applies or applied at the time of the proceedings, being proceedings in respect of a member of a home force who is or was at that time attached to the first mentioned force under that section;

whether in any event those proceedings take place in Great Britain or elsewhere.

3. Where a ground for the referral of a child’s case to a children’s hearing under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 is that mentioned in section 32(2)(g) of that Act (commission by the child of an offence) and that ground has either been accepted by the child and, where necessary, by his parent or been established to the satisfaction of the sheriff under section 42 of that Act, the acceptance or establishment of that ground shall be treated for the purposes of this Act (but not otherwise) as a conviction, and any disposal of the case thereafter by a children’s hearing shall be treated for those purposes as a sentence; and references in this Act to a person’s being charged with or prosecuted for an offence shall be construed accordingly.

4.—(1) Subject to sections 7 and 8 below, a person who has become a rehabilitated person for the purposes of this Act in respect of a conviction shall be treated for all purposes in law as a person who has not committed or been charged with or prosecuted for or convicted of or sentenced for the offence or offences which were the subject of that conviction; and, not- withstanding the provisions of any other enactment or rule of law to the contrary, but subject as aforesaid—
 * (a) no evidence shall be admissible in any proceedings before a judicial authority exercising its jurisdiction or functions in Great Britain to prove that any such person has committed or been charged with or prosecuted for or convicted of or sentenced for any offence which was the subject of a spent conviction; and
 * (b) a person shall not, in any such proceedings, be asked, and, if asked, shall not be required to answer, any question relating to his past which cannot be answered