UK Offence Report

In article 5(3) the exception to the offence from the words “Provided” up to and including “United Kingdom”,…

article 2(3) of The Export of Goods (Control) (Amendment No. 3) Order 1999

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

3 In article 5(3) the exception to the offence from the words “Provided” up to and including “United Kingdom”, shall be replaced by the following paragraph:– Provided that no person shall be guilty of an offence under this paragraph where– the licence had been previously modified by the Secretary of State without that person’s consent, the alleged failure to comply would not have been

a failure had the licence not been so modified, and that person proves that the export from the United Kingdom had taken place before the modification had been made. .

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
importing or exporting without authority
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 article 2(3)?

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. Moving the goods across the border under the Export of Goods (Control) (Amendment No. 3) Order 1999 without the licence the instrument requires.
  2. Holding a licence for one consignment and using it for another.
  3. Sending goods in transit through the United Kingdom, where the provision catches transit as well as import and export.

Penalty

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

no penalty is stated here: this instrument amends another one, and the penalty for the offence is in the instrument being amended.

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
Status not determined
Made
23 June 1999
In force from
14 July 1999
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 Order) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

This Order further amends the Export of Goods (Control) Order 1994 by: a requiring all licences made by the Secretary of State under the Order to be made in writing; b removing an ambiguity with respect to burden of proof in the exception to the offence of exporting goods in violation of a condition in the licence, namely that it is for the prosecution to establish whether or not the licence has been modified without the consent of the licensee and whether or not any modification made was material to the offence that is charged and that it is for the defendant to prove that the export happened before the modification took effect; c deleting the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia from the list of countries in Group 3 in Part I of Schedule 1 to which certain road vehicles may not be exported without a licence; d making the following principal amendments to Part III of Schedule 1 (the “military list”): i in entry ML5, test and alignment equipment are added to the equipment under control, ii in entry ML5c, countermeasure equipment for items specified in either entry ML5a or ML5b are now controlled, iii in entry ML5, a new head, ML5d, is added which controls field test and alignment equipment, specially designed for items specified in either entry ML5a or ML5b, iv in entry ML7 and ML7a, the headings are amended to make them consistent with the items controlled and a minor printing error in heading ML7a is corrected, v in entry ML19, a new head ML19f is added which controls continuous wave or pulsed “laser” systems specially designed to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision i.e. to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices, and vi chlorine trifluoride is removed from the control in entry ML8a.5.

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