Criminal Liability in Regulatory Contexts Responses - Law ...

Food Standards Agency
1.709 Strongly agree. Reflect situation in food and feed law. Hierarchy of enforcement
and prosecution is usually last resort. Small number of prosecutions in relation to
number of notices and other sanctions is evidence of effective use of existing
hierarchy. Structure of existing hierarchy does not dictate where sanctions should
start (ie first level does not have to be completed before the second).
Association of Chief Trading Standards Officers (ACTSO)
1.710 Broadly welcome civil penalties to options available to Trading Standards
Services when deciding most appropriate course of action to address
infringements. But sanctions should only apply in addition to option of starting
criminal proceedings. Rigidly applying hierarchy will create gaps that
unscrupulous businesses will seek to exploit and prevent local authorities from
exercising judgment about the most appropriate course of action considering all
circumstances and relevant local issues.
Leicester City Council
1.711 Agree. Reflected in our enforcement policies.
EEF: The Manufacturers’ Association
1.712 A mix of civil and criminal penalties should be used to create a hierarchy of
seriousness. Criminal sanctions and the stigma they bear should be reserved for
more serious offences that could reasonably warrant imprisonment or an
unlimited fine.
Care Quality Commission (CQC)
1.713 Consistent with approach described in CQC’s enforcement policy.
Faculty of Advocates
1.714 Seems uncontroversial.
Central England Trading Standards Authorities (CETSA) and West Midlands
Region County Chief Environmental Health Officers Group
1.715 We do not disagree with this as a policy statement. The fact that our
enforcement policies are written with a hierarchy of responses to breaches and
our enforcement activities reflect this hierarchy principle is evidence of this.
Following the Regulators’ Compliance Code ensures this principle is complied
with in all but the most exceptional circumstances, where it is necessary to go
direct to criminal sanction and, even then the Code for Crown Prosecutors would
be applied. For these cases, criminal sanctions should remain as available. We
reiterate that, at the moment, the civil sanctions in the RES Act are not available
to local authority regulators.
Food Law Group
1.716 We found it difficult to understand what this would mean in practice but broadly
agreed with the principle.
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