Draft Legislative Reform (Revocation of Prescribed Form of Penalty Notice for Disorderly Behaviour) Order 2009 - Regulatory Reform Committee Contents

5  Preconditions and tests for LROs

23. The LRRA sets out a number of tests for legislative reform orders (LROs). In addition, House of Commons Standing Order No. 141 requires us to consider whether LROs give rise to issues under the criteria for consideration of statutory instruments (such as whether the draft Order appears to have retrospective effect) and whether the draft Order purports to make an inappropriate use of delegated legislation.

24. We do not consider that any issues arise under the Standing Orders, nor that there is inappropriate use of delegated legislation. The statutory tests that we consider relevant in the present case are those of whether a burden exists and whether there is removal of necessary protection, which are addressed below.

Removal of burden

25. The weight of consultation responses clearly suggests that the proposal would help to make issuing PNDs more efficient and would save both money and officer time. In answers to questions from us, the Department indicated that issuing a PND takes an officer approximately 30 minutes as opposed to the 2½ hours required to prepare a prosecution case file,[13] which is clearly a very substantial time saving. There were essentially no strong counter-arguments. In any event it seems fairly self-evident to us that, once the decision has been taken to invest in PDA technology, electronic procedures will offer greater efficiency. We agree that the proposal would remove an administrative burden within the meaning of the LRRA.

Removal of necessary protection

26. On the face of it, the proposal is merely about a change of format and should therefore remove no protection at all. We do not believe that the ED is as informative and cogent in explaining this as it might have been. However, through our questions to the Department we have established that the proposal is not about removing important sections of the current form, but rather about allowing police forces the flexibility, when they are ready, to move away from the strict template required by the current legislation to a form that can be adapted to local technology. It is clear also that since consultation there have been important improvements in guidance.

27. We are conscious of the worries raised by the Police Federation and the Law Society. The principal concern flowing from this proposed reform, rather than from general misgivings about PNDs which are not strictly a matter for consideration here, is that of potential greater inconsistency in the practice of issuing PNDs resulting from the use of different forms. So far as that is concerned, we welcome the provision of both additional guidance and the proposed non-statutory model PND form. We encourage police forces to follow both the guidance and the model form closely unless there are sound practical reasons to depart from the model. Such changes should not prejudice consistency of application.

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13   See Annex, question 3 Back

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Prepared 18 November 2009