Fraud Bill - RIA
The key objective of the Fraud Bill is to modernise the existing statutory offences of deception which are currently used to tackle fraud. This will assist prosecution not only of serious and complex fraud (the SFO's field) but also of more routine cases prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department of Trade and Industry.
The main risk being addressed in this Regulatory Impact Assessment is that developing technology enables fraudsters to exploit gaps in the current law, for example on fraud relating to deceiving machines and the possession, in the home, of personal financial data and computer programmes etc, to carry out frauds.
The risk of changing the law is that of unforeseen consequences. In the light of reactions to the Consultation Paper, we have reduced that risk to a minimal level by retaining the wide common law offence of 'conspiracy to defraud' (contrary to the Law Commission's original recommendation). This provides a 'safety net' for any cases conceivably not caught by other charges.
Date: Tue Sep 06 11:58:01 BST 2005
Full Document
Adobe provide a free online tool which converts PDF files to text. To use this service visit http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html (new window)
To view a document in Adobe PDF format, you may first need to download a free copy of the Adobe Acrobat reader (new window).
