UK Offence Report

Offences and Penalties

regulation 7(1) of The Bovine Products (Despatch to other Member States) Regulations 1996

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

1 A person contravening any provision of these Regulations shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to

a fine not exceeding level

5 on the standard scale or to imprisonment for

a term not exceeding three months or to 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
a person
Conduct
breaching the provision
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 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 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.

What would breach regulation 7(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. Doing what the provision prohibits, or failing to do what it requires under the Bovine Products (Despatch to other Member States) Regulations 1996.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£5,000
Standard scale
Level 5
Maximum prison (summary)
3 months

this is the level 5 value when the instrument came into force (1996-09-04); the standard scale is keyed to the date the offence was committed, and for conduct today the same words mean an unlimited fine.

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 Bovine Products (Production and Despatch) Regulations 1997
Revoked on
15 March 1997
Made
3 September 1996
In force from
4 September 1996
Extent
E+W+S

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 implement in part Commission Decision 96/239/EC on emergency measures to protect against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, as amended by Commission Decision 96/362/EC. They control the despatch to other member States of meat and other products from bovine animals slaughtered outside the United Kingdom (regulation 3). They make provision for the Minister to charge fees (regulation 4) and contain provisions on enforcement, obstruction, offences and penalties (regulations 5 to 8). They amend the Products of Animal Origin (Import and Export) Regulations 1992 (S.I. 1992/3292) and the Animals and Animal Products (Import and Export) Regulations 1995 (S.I. 1995/2428) so that those Regulations apply without prejudice to these Regulations (regulation 9). A Compliance Cost Assessment has been prepared and placed in the library of each House of Parliament. Copies can be obtained from the Meat Hygiene Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Government Buildings, Hook Rise South, Tolworth, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 7NF.

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”; the provision states liability on summary conviction; the provision states a penalty in older drafting
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