Part 3: Sale and delivery of knives Section 36: Defence to sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18: Scotland
Section 141A(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1998 ("the CJA") provides that it is an offence in Scotland to sell knives or certain articles with a blade or point to persons under the relevant age. For a knife or knife blade designed for domestic use the relevant age is 16, in any other case the relevant age is 18.
	Section 141A (3A) provides it is not an offence to sell or hire a knife or knife blade designed for domestic use to a person aged 16 or over. Section 141A(4) provides a defence for a person charged with this offence to prove that they believed the person to whom the product was sold was of or above the relevant and had either taken reasonable steps to establish the purchaser’s age or no reasonable person, based on the purchaser’s appearance, could have suspected they were under 18.
	Section 36 amends subsections (3A) and (4) to exclude from the exclusion and defence sales or hiring carried out remotely. It also inserts new section 141C into the CJA which provides a defence to the section 141A offence in the context of remote sales of bladed or pointed articles when Conditions A to D are met. A remote sale is any sale where the seller or person acting on the seller’s behalf was not in the presence of the buyer at the point of sale. This includes, for example, when the sale was made online, by mail order or over the telephone, and applies to both individuals and companies.
	In order to be able to rely on this defence, the accused must meet the conditions below:
Condition A is that, at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed, the seller operated a system for checking that recipients of purchased or hired articles were not under the age of 18, and that such a system was likely to prevent persons under the age of 18 from buying or hiring such articles.
Condition B is that the package containing the article, when dispatched by the seller, was clearly marked to indicate that it contained an article with a blade or which was sharply pointed (as the case may be), and when finally delivered, it should only be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.
Condition C is that the seller took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to ensure that, when finally delivered, the package would only be delivered to a person aged 18 or over.
Condition D is that the seller did not deliver the package, or arrange for its delivery, to a locker. A locker is defined in subsection (10).
	This section forms part of the law of Scotland.