UK Offence Report

Offences and penalties

regulation 7 of Bread and Flour Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998

This offence was read from the text as made, and no revised version was available, so a later revocation could not be ruled out. Check the current text at legislation.gov.uk.

What the provision says

7 If any person contravenes regulation 4(4),

5 or 6(2) he shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to

a fine not exceeding level

5 on the standard scale.

Text as made, from legislation.gov.uk. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.

Who it binds, and what has to be proved

Binds
a person
Conduct
contravening a requirement of the instrument
Fault element
Strict liability
Burden of proof
Legal burden on the defendant

The prosecution must prove that the conduct happened. This is a strict liability offence as drafted: the provision uses no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence, so there is no need to show that a person meant to do it, knew about it, or was careless.

Intention, knowledge and carelessness are irrelevant to guilt. They may still matter a great deal to sentence.

The provision gives a defence the defendant must prove, on the balance of probabilities. A legal burden of that kind can be read down to a merely evidential one under section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 where placing it on the defendant would be disproportionate (R v Lambert [2001] UKHL 37; Sheldrake v DPP [2004] UKHL 43).

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision.

The defence, as drafted

9 In any proceedings for an offence under these Regulations it shall be a defence for the person charged to prove that the food in respect of which the offence is alleged to have been committed was intended for export to a country which has legislation analogous to these Regulations and that the food complies with that legislation.

What would breach regulation 7?

These are illustrations, not law. They are generated from the provision’s own words to show the shape of the offence. Whether any particular conduct is caught depends on the full text, on any amendment since, and on the facts.

  1. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the Bread and Flour Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998, whatever the reason for doing it.
  2. Where the requirement is a positive duty, letting the time for performing it pass without performing it.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£5,000
Standard scale
Level 5
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

in Northern Ireland a reference to a level is construed as referring to the standard scale as it currently stands (Fines and Penalties (NI) Order 1984 art.5(3)), not as it stood when the instrument was made.

Sentencing

Offences of this kind are usually sentenced under the guidelines below. This is a mapping by subject, not a finding about this provision, and the links go to a search of the Sentencing Council’s own site.

Prosecution figures

No published per-offence figure was found for this provision, and it could not be matched to a Ministry of Justice offence code. Offences created by statutory instrument very largely do not have one. Absence of a figure is not evidence that the offence is unused.

Status and lifecycle

Current status
Status not determined
Made
28 January 1998
In force from
9 March 1998
Extent
Not stated

How this was established: read from the text as made; no revised version available, so later revocation could not be ruled out.

What the instrument is for

(This note is not part of the Regulations.) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations revoke and replace the Bread and Flour Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1996. The Regulations— a provide for exemptions from the Regulations (regulation 3); b require that wheat flour (subject to certain exceptions) be fortified with specified essential ingredients (regulation 4, Schedules 1 and 2); c restrict the use of specified ingredients in the preparation of flour and bread and require that an indication of the presence of a flour treatment agent be given in the case both of prepacked and of non-prepacked bread (regulation 5, Schedule 3); d reserve the names “wholemeal” and “wheat germ” for bread which complies with specified compositional requirements and prohibit the sale or advertising for sale using these names of bread which does not comply with the compositional requirements (regulation 6); e create offences and prescribe penalties (regulation 7); f specify the enforcement authority (regulation 8); g provide a defence in relation to exports in implementation of Article 2 and 3 of, as read with the ninth recital to, Council Directive No. 89/397/EEC (O.J. No. L186, 30.6.89, p. 23) on the official control of foodstuffs (regulation 9); h apply various provisions of the Food Safety (Northern Ireland) Order 1991 (regulation 10); i amend and revoke specified Regulations (regulations 11 and 12). The British Pharmacopoeia 1973, 1980 and 1988 and the British Pharmaceutical Codex 1973, referred to in Schedule 1, may be inspected at the Biomedical Library, Belfast City Hospital, Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7AB, tel. 01232 263913. These Regulations were notified in draft to the European Commission pursuant to Council Directive 83/189/EEC laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations (O.J. No. L109, 26.4.83, p. 8) as amended by Council Directive 88/182/EEC (O.J. No. L81, 26.3.88, p. 75), Commission Decision 92/400/EEC (O.J. No. L221, 6.8.92, p. 55), European Parliament and Council Directive 94/10/EEC (O.J. No. L100, 19.4.94, p. 30) and Commission Decision 96/139/EC (O.J. No. L32, 10.2.96, p. 31).

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

How this was identified as an offence

Everything above rests on the judgement that this provision creates a criminal offence, rather than mentioning one. That judgement is made by rule, from the words of the provision, and this is the rule that made it — with a confidence of 0.92.

Basis
the provision says a person is “guilty of an offence”
Confidence
0.92 of 1.00

A provision that states a penalty for an offence created elsewhere can read very like one that creates an offence, and the rules can mistake the one for the other. If the text quoted above sets a penalty for something made an offence by another provision, treat the classification on this page with that in mind, and read the instrument.

Check the source