Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 6:15 pm on 17 June 2008.
Pat McFadden
Minister of State (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Member, Labour Party National Executive Committee
The Clause ensures that where a business is required to pay a variable monetary penalty, whether alone or in combination with non-monetary discretionary requirements or undertakings, the order made by the Minister must secure that the person may not be prosecuted at a later date for the same incident of regulatory non-compliance. This, again, is because of the principle of freedom from Double Jeopardy. Variable monetary penalties will be enforced through the civil courts. The Bill, particularly clause 52, to which I referred a little while ago, will ensure that regulators have access to an efficient and streamlined procedure for recovering monetary penalties.
I draw attention to clause 44(3), by virtue of which the restriction does not apply where a non-monetary discretionary requirement is imposed or an undertaking is accepted without the imposition of a variable monetary penalty. In such cases, where the business fails to comply with the sanction—we talked about a business that might have spilt chemicals on parkland and so on—it may be prosecuted at a later date for the original offence. The nature of non-monetary requirements is not as punitive, and therefore we believe that it is fair to allow regulators to pursue a prosecution in such cases, where a business fails to comply with the original requirement to restore the situation. Subsection (4) allows for the period within which criminal prosecutions may be instituted to be extended.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
The phrase stems from the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution; prohibiting individuals from being subject for the same offence to be "twice put in jeopardy of life and limb", and refers, in the strict sense, to three protections: protection from being retried for the same crime after an acquittal; protection from retrial after a conviction; and protection from being punished multiple times for the same offense.
When employed strictly, the mechanism can be used as a defense - for example, the policemen who beat up black motorist Rodney King in 1991 in Los Angeles, CA, were acquitted of assault in a county court, and as a result, could not be tried for those crimes in Federal court, and mirror court cases in the Southern United states in the 1960s where racially motivated crimes were not actively prosecuted nor convicted in local courts. A more pronounced example is that of U.S. citizen and terrorist Timothy McVeigh; sentenced to death for murdering eight U.S. federal employees with a bomb (as federal law only covers the federal employees killed in the explosion, a state court could have tried him for the deaths of the other hundred.
In 2003, Home Secretary David Blunkett abolished this strict form of double jeopardy; retrials are now allowed if there is 'new and compelling evidence'.
In addition, an optional protocol (specifically, the Seventh Protocol, Article Four) of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects against double jeopardy, states: "No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State."; only Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom have not ratified this optional convention.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
