UK Offence Report

1 If there is any breach of regulation 2(1) then the owner of the ship shall be guilty of an offence and…

regulation 6(1) of The Merchant Shipping (Passenger Boarding Cards) Regulations 1988

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

1 If there is any breach of regulation 2(1) then the owner of the ship shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to

a fine not exceeding £2,000 or on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for

a term not exceeding two years or

a fine or both.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
an owner
Conduct
contravening a requirement of the instrument
Fault element
Strict liability
Burden of proof
No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything

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 an owner 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 states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision; other provisions of the same instrument use a mens rea word while this one does not (the Cundy v Le Cocq contrast).

What would breach regulation 6(1)?

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. On these words an offence is committed where there is any breach of regulation 2(1) then.
  2. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the Merchant Shipping (Passenger Boarding Cards) Regulations 1988, whatever the reason for doing it.
  3. Where the requirement is a positive duty, letting the time for performing it pass without performing it.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Either way — magistrates’ court or Crown Court
Maximum fine
£2,000
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined
Maximum prison (on indictment)
2 years

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
Revoked
Revoked by
The Merchant Shipping (Counting and Registration of Persons on Board Passenger Ships) Regulations 1999
Revoked on
22 July 1999
Made
11 February 1988
In force from
29 February 1988
Extent
Not stated

How this was established: the instrument was revoked by a later instrument found in this corpus.

What the instrument is for

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

These Regulations apply to United Kingdom passenger ships operating as passenger ships of Classes II and II(A), and require the operation of a boarding card system for all voyages on which passengers are carried. They require documentation to be retained for future inspection by persons duly authorised by the Secretary of State, and supplementary arrangements to be made for the determination of the numbers of passengers who remain on board the ship from a previous voyage. It is to be an offence under the Regulations for a ship to leave its berth before the total number of passengers on board has been determined by means of the boarding card system and the master informed. It is also to be an offence for any person to make a false statement in connection with the boarding card system, or to falsify the documentation.

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

What Parliament said

Mentions of this instrument in Hansard. Parliamentary material is reused under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

Other offences in the same 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