Criminal Liability in Regulatory Contexts Responses - Law ...

NHS Counter Fraud an Security Management Service
1.657 Remit concerned primarily with offences that are included in either Fraud Act or
Theft Act 1968 or 1978 (offence also created through Health act 1999 to provide
a more serious sanction for repeated evasion of charges and persistent fraud.)
Other primary offences (eg under Identity Card Act 2006 and Counterfeiting Act
2001) are often charged in NHS fraud-related cases. If individual has committed
a criminal offence, there should be little or no distinction based on whether
offence was committed in regulatory setting or otherwise. There is potential for
fraud related to healthcare (eg fraudulent report against waiting time targets) we
do not support special treatment of these offences compared with finaland and
other types of fraud. Treating an individual differently because of setting of
offence would be counter-productive to aims of crating an anti-fraud culture and
deterring fraud.
Faculty of Advocates
1.658 See under proposal 4.
The Law Society
1.659 We agree with this proposal in principle. We agree that the Fraud Act 2006
works well in practice, is flexible and covers the variety of different situations in
which fraud may be committed. It is also ‘future proof’, in that it can be adapted
to frauds committed by using new technology. Where there is a generic Fraud
Act offence the prosecution should, as a rule, rely on that rather than any other
discrete example of a dishonesty offence.
1.660 The only drawback that using a generic Fraud Act offence could cause is that
specific offences (for example, making a false declaration in an firearms
application) may not show up in a future Criminal Record Bureau check, where it
may be useful that more specific information concerning what the offence actually
was about was apparent. Again, we agree that the proposal is a good principle,
but there may be some situations where it is more appropriate to rely upon a
specific offence directed towards a particular type of harm, or modus operandi, so
that it is flagged up in the future. This is particularly important when looking at
areas that require tight regulation and the firearm offence is a good example. In
this jurisdiction firearms are very tightly regulated, for good reason, and it could
be argued that engaging in fraudulent activity in this area should be properly dealt
with under the firearms legislation to reflect the overall gravity of the situation.
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