Paula, how has the criminal law developed the concept of consent?

Well, the role and effect of consent differs across criminal law and across different activities that are regulated by criminal law, and this is chiefly in offenses against the person, and as you say, Lucy, in many sexual offenses.

In fact, consent in criminal law is subject to an upcoming review by the Law Commission, which has described the law in this area as unsettled, incoherent, and unpredictable.

So with that in mind, let's turn to the question of the ability to consent to harm.

As in medical treatment, what would otherwise be a battery can be lawful by virtue of consent, activities such as boxing or ear piercing.

And likewise, an activity that an individual has ostensibly consented to can be unlawful simply because the law does not recognize it as harm that can be validly consented to.

And it's not just a question of the extent of the harm and a simple test of this level of harm is permissible, and after that point it is not.The law has dealt with this in quite a context-specific manner and gradually case by case in order to set out the boundaries of this.

Yeah, so the classic debate on this is how far do you take this in terms of what deception is capable of vitiating consent, isn't it? So if somebody lies and tells someone that they're a billionaire, and somebody consents to having sex with them on that basis, is that capable of vitiating consent?