UK Offence Report

6 Any person who, without lawful authority or excuse, proof of which shall lie on him, contravenes or fails…

article 6 of The Testing of Poultry Flocks Order 1989

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

6 Any person who, without lawful authority or excuse, proof of which shall lie on him, contravenes or fails to comply with any provision of this Order commits an offence against the Act.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
failing to comply with a notice or direction
Fault element
Strict liability
Burden of proof
An element of the offence, for the prosecution to prove

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.

“Without reasonable excuse” here is an element of the offence rather than a defence, so its absence is for the prosecution to prove (R v Charles [2009] EWCA Crim 1570).

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision; qualified by lawful excuse (an element).

The defence, as drafted

6 Any person who, without lawful authority or excuse, proof of which shall lie on him, contravenes or fails to comply with any provision of this Order commits an offence against the Act.

What would breach article 6?

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 a person proof of which shall lie on him, contravenes or fails to comply with any provision of this Order.
  2. Being served with a notice under the Testing of Poultry Flocks Order 1989 and doing nothing by the date it specifies.
  3. Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it.
  4. Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Not determined
Maximum fine
Not determined
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

no penalty is stated in this instrument; it may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence.

No penalty was determined from this instrument. It may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence. Absence of a figure here is not evidence that the offence carries no penalty.

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 Poultry Laying Flocks (Testing and Registration etc.) Order 1989
Revoked on
26 October 1989
Made
15 March 1989
In force from
16 March 1989
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 Order) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

This Order requires the owner or person in charge of a poultry flock to ensure that samples are taken in respect of the flock and are submitted to a laboratory for testing for the presence of salmonella (article 3 and Schedule). The Order also requires such an owner or person in charge to keep records of all such tests (article 5). The Order also requires the person in charge of a laboratory to which any such sample has been submitted for testing to ensure that the test is carried out in the required manner and that the result of the test is reported to the person who submitted the sample and who, if he is not the owner or person in charge of the flock in respect of which the sample was taken, is required to pass the report to the owner or person in charge of the flock (article 4). “Poultry flock” for the purposes of this Order means any flock of poultry consisting of not less than 25 birds which are kept for the production of eggs for human consumption or breeding (including birds which are being reared to produce eggs for either of those purposes) and any flock of poultry consisting of less than 25 birds the eggs of which are sold for human consumption (article 2).

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 0.92.

Basis
the provision says a person “commits 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