UK Offence Report

9 Any breach of these Regulations shall be an offence on the part of the owner, manager, demise charterer…

regulation 9 of The Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Pollution by Garbage) Regulations 1988

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

9 Any breach of these Regulations shall be an offence on the part of the owner, manager, demise charterer and master of the ship punishable on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or on conviction on indictment by a fine.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
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 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 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

10 1 It shall be a defence to any charge under these Regulations to prove that the disposal was necessary for the purpose of securing the safety of the ship and/or those on board, or of saving life at sea, or that the escape of garbage resulted from damage to the ship or its equipment and that all reasonable precautions were taken

What would breach regulation 9?

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 Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Pollution by Garbage) Regulations 1988, 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
Either way — magistrates’ court or Crown Court
Maximum fine
£2,000
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

expressed as the statutory maximum (the prescribed sum): the same words mean £5,000 in England and Wales and £10,000 in Scotland.

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 (Prevention of Pollution by Garbage) Regulations 1998
Revoked on
1 July 1998
Made
23 December 1988
In force from
31 December 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 give effect to regulations 1—6 of Annex V to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships 1973 (Cmnd 5748) as amended by the Protocol thereto of 1978 (Cmnd 7347). The Convention as amended with Annexes I and II thereto was ratified by the United Kingdom on 22nd May 1980 and came into force internationally on 2nd October 1983. Annex V, which was accepted by the United Kingdom on 27th May 1986, comes into force internationally on 31st December 1988. The Regulations apply to United Kingdom ships wherever they may be and to other ships while they are within the United Kingdom or United Kingdom territorial waters. The term“ships” in these Regulations includes submersible craft and offshore installations. Any discharge of garbage from ships into the sea must comply with the requirements of the Regulations. The requirements applicable to discharges in Special Areas are more stringent than those applicable outside Special Areas. At the time when these Regulations come into force there are no Special Areas but areas may subsequently be designated as such by the Secretary of State in a Merchant Shipping Notice. If a ship fails to comply with the requirements of these Regulations the owner, manager, charterer and master are each guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or on conviction on indictment by a fine.

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.

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 0.88.

Basis
the provision says the conduct “is an offence”; the provision says an offence is committed “if” something happens; the provision says the conduct is “punishable”
Confidence
0.88 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