Clause 8
Energy Bill
2:00 pm
Malcolm Wicks (Minister of State (Energy), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Croydon North, Labour)
To ensure that the Department, as the licensing authority, can keep tight control of activities undertaken by licence holders, the clause sets up penalties for breaching certain key licence conditions. There are also penalties for misrepresentation and non-disclosure in relation to licences. The offences attracting criminal penalties under this clause include carrying out an activity, such as a drilling operation, without first obtaining the prior consent specified by the licence; breaching any conditions attached to a consent; or failing to keep records, give notice, or make a return or report, as required by the licence. Anyone found guilty of such offences will be subject to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum on summary conviction or an unlimited fine on conviction on indictment. The licensee, as the person responsible for the licence, will be liable for all offences under the licence even where they are not directly responsible, for example, where the unauthorised activity is carried out by a subcontractor.
However, it is recognised that licence holders may not always be at fault. Subsection (2) accordingly ensures that licence holders will have a valid defence, if they can show that they exercised due diligence in trying to comply with the licence conditions. In the case of a contractor, due diligence could include appropriate monitoring and supervision of a contractor who was acting on behalf of a licensee even if the contractor subsequently still failed to comply with conditions. Subsection (1) provides for the Secretary of State to specify, by order, further kinds of breaches that will amount to an offence. That will allow the Department to put in place new criminal sanctions for conditions that may be needed in the licence in the future in response to changes in the industry. The penalties for non-compliance with licence conditions are, we believe, proportionate and sufficiently strong to deter licence holders from committing the offence.