UK Offence Report

3 A person who contravenes paragraph (1) or (2) commits an offence.

regulation 7(3) of The State Pension Credit (Disclosure of Information) (Electricity Suppliers) Regulations 2010

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 A person who contravenes paragraph (1) or (2) commits an offence.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
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 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(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. On these words an offence is committed where a person contravenes paragraph (1) or (2).
  2. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the State Pension Credit (Disclosure of Information) (Electricity Suppliers) Regulations 2010, 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
£5,000
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined
Maximum prison (on indictment)
1 year

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
Status not determined
Made
4 February 2010
In force from
5 February 2010
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 Regulations) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations deal with the sharing of data between the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and certain electricity suppliers. The purpose of the data share is to match certain state pension credit (“SPC”) recipients who on 26th March 2010 are in receipt of guarantee credit (but not savings credit) with the domestic customers of those suppliers. This is to enable identification of those persons who are eligible for financial assistance towards their electricity bill in accordance with a support scheme established pursuant to arrangements made between the Secretary of State and the electricity suppliers. The suppliers will use the information to provide assistance, for instance by means of a credit to the customers’ electricity account, and then to contact those customers with a view to providing them with energy efficiency measures that could assist their household in becoming more energy efficient. Regulation 2 contains interpretation provisions. Regulation 3 defines an electricity supplier. Regulation 4 defines “relevant SPC claimants” about whom the Secretary of State may disclose the information listed in regulation 5 to an electricity supplier. Regulation 5 permits the Secretary of State (or her service provider) to disclose to electricity suppliers certain types of social security information about relevant SPC claimants for the purpose of identifying and assisting individuals who qualify for financial assistance towards their electricity bill under the energy rebate scheme. Once it has been determined that individuals will receive an automatic credit to their electricity bill, the electricity suppliers may use the disclosed information to contact those individuals with a view to offering (a) to deliver various energy efficiency measures, and (b) to place them on a register for priority services. Regulation 6 allows an electricity supplier to disclose to the Secretary of State (or her service provider) the names and addresses of its domestic customers and which of those customers are already in receipt of a discounted tariff. This is for the purpose of helping the Secretary of State (i) to ascertain the number of persons who may be eligible for an automatic award, (ii) to identify which of those customers are relevant SPC claimants who may qualify for an automatic award, and (iii) to provide each electricity supplier with a list of its customers who are such claimants and may qualify for an automatic financial award and the information referred to in regulation 5. Regulations 7 and 8 create offences for improper use of information that has been disclosed, as well as setting out defences that may be available. An impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as no impact on the private or voluntary sector is foreseen.

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