ABSTRACT
The prosecutor appealed. Lord Goddard CJ: Before a person can be convicted of aiding and abetting the commission of an offence he must at least know the essential matters which constitute that offence. He need not actually know that an offence has been committed, because he may not know that the facts constitute an offence and ignorance of the law is not a defence. If a person knows all the facts and is assisting another person to do certain things, and it turns out that the doing of those things constitutes an offence, the person who is assisting is guilty of aiding and abetting that offence, because to allow him to say, ‘I knew of all those facts but I did not know that an offence was committed’, would be allowing him to set up ignorance of the law as a defence.
