Law Reform: Reform of fraud offences gets nearer

Monday 17 May 2004 at 6:22 pm | In News | Post Comment

The Government proposes to reform the law of fraud along the lines proposed by the Law Commission report (published in 2002).
The Commission concluded that introducing a general fraud offence would improve the criminal law in several respects. It would help to make the law simpler and more easily understandable for juries, defendants and the general public (no mention of law students).
The existence of a clear definition of fraud would also help to make the prosecution process more efficient and effective. Fraud in this context includes the “deception offences”, referred to in the Theft Act 1978, and the 1996 Act, and in your syllabus.
The Law Commission report says that even the Theft (Amendment) Act 1996, remains over-specific and vulnerable to technical assaults. The current law on fraud needs to keep pace with constantly emerging techniques for fraud, particularly with rapidly changing technology.
The proposals:
1. The main proposal is for a general offence of fraud which can be committed in 3 different ways: by false representation, by wrongfully failing to disclose information, or by abuse of office. In each case the behaviour must be dishonest, and must aim at securing a gain for the defendant or a loss for another. But the gain does not actually have to take place, as it does under the existing statutory offences, which would be repealed.
2. New offence of obtaining services dishonestly
3. New offence of possessing equipment to commit fraud 4. Fraudulent Trading

See here for the full consultation document

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^