Criminal

Regulations requiring compliance with EC Directive as amended - Directive amended subsequent to making of regulations - breach of Directive as subsequently amended not offenceMayne and another v Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: (Kennedy LJ and Jackson J): 13 July 2000

Reg.6 of the Products of Animal Origin (Import and Export) Reg 1992 made it an offence to export beef without compliance with Council Directives (64/432/EC; 91/497/EC) which required beef slaughtered in UK restricted regions and exported to member states to be accompanied by a health certificate.

Reg.1(4) provided that 'any reference in these regulations to a Directive is a reference to that Directive as amended.' At that time the Regulations were made, the UK was not a restricted region or area.

After those regulations came into force the Directives were amended so as to require a health certificate to accompany all such beef exports.

Thereafter the defendants exported beef without such certificates and were convicted of nine offences of being concerned in export from the UK to France of lorry loads of beef unaccompanied by valid export health certificates, contrary to reg.6 of the 1992 Regulations.

They appealed by way of case stated.

Richard Perkoff (instructed by Clyde & Co, Guildford) for the first defendant.

Malcolm Gibney (instructed by Charles Russell Baldocks, Guildford) for the second defendant.

Christopher Vajda QC and Mary McCarthy (instructed by Legal Advisor and Solicitor, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) for the ministry.Held, allowing the appeal, that reg.1(4) only dealt with the position at the time those Regulations were made, and did not purport to take account of the future amendments to the Directive which rendered the UK a restricted region or area for beef where a certificate was required; that such Regulations, which imposed criminal sanctions for failure to comply with a Directive drawn up by a third party, could not continue to be used to enforce that Directive if it were altered by a third party, unless the wording of the Regulations clearly took account of the possibility of future amendments to the Directive; and that since that was not the position here the matter would be remitted to the stipendiary magistrate with a direction to acquit.