Manator
©Honorary Essex Boy™
The regulations and common sense. Contradiction or not?
Regulations are set in place for various reasons but mainly I suppose to 'regulate', we sometimes refer to the regulations with some distaste, many times they do go against what we believe or do not follow common sense, or do they?
Unfortunately regulations have to be written in legal jargon, it stands therefore that for every regulation there is a legal argument, this is the basis of all our laws and the reason we have so many lawyers.
Firstly we have to establish the lawful status of the regulation, this has a direct bearing on its legal standing, most people get the two mixed up and often come to the wrong conclusions based on this mistake.
So I have identified a difference with the above statements and given some argument, but how do we know if the regulation is Law, or is guidance?
Firstly the word 'regulation' often infers a legal act, and that is the first clue, for a regulation to become law it must first be passed by parliament as an 'act', the process used to pass all laws, if a regulation has not been passed by parliament it is not Law.
Any regulation not passed by act of parliament is just a guideline and used more as a standard rather than an enforced rule.
So why have regulations if they are not enforced under law?
The simple answer is so that all who are following the examples used in the regulations will be 'inline' with good practice techniques and tried and tested guides. Very useful for people like us who carry out electrical installations all over the country for an example.
Now let us take BS7671 as our example, it is after all more what we all know and use each and every day.
We are all fully aware that these regulations are not law, it has been pointed out in a number of cases and was a couple of years ago brought to a definitive close when a Scottish court judge concluded that BS7671 was not law and therefore not admissible in a court of law as a tool for prosecution. The argument here could be that if it is not law then non conformity to these regulations would not result in a prosecution. Well that would be very foolish and I will explain.
The court case that was brought before the Scottish Court was brought under the BS7671 regulations, the simple fact that they are not law led the Judge to come to the only conclusion that the evidence brought was not acceptable. Arguments followed that BS7671 could be used as a yardstick as to what was right, and what was wrong, but this is were common sense and the law differ, the law deals with facts and the fact here was BS7671 is not law, therefore any argument placed on the basis of BS7671 could not be entered.
An outline of this case and the resulting responses can be found here:
TEF post
What we now have to consider is what outcome could have been achieved if the prosecution was brought under a statute regulation?
We have already established that BS7671 is not law, but many things that constitute those regulations are. So what are they?
Well this is where you come in, many regulations are in force during our normal day to day existence that are statutory and we often overlook them. As an exercise look over my post and the link provided and see if you could have come up with a successful prosecution.
I normally exclude members who I think could provide direct answers, however in this case I will allow Sidewinder to interject
Regulations are set in place for various reasons but mainly I suppose to 'regulate', we sometimes refer to the regulations with some distaste, many times they do go against what we believe or do not follow common sense, or do they?
Unfortunately regulations have to be written in legal jargon, it stands therefore that for every regulation there is a legal argument, this is the basis of all our laws and the reason we have so many lawyers.
Firstly we have to establish the lawful status of the regulation, this has a direct bearing on its legal standing, most people get the two mixed up and often come to the wrong conclusions based on this mistake.
So I have identified a difference with the above statements and given some argument, but how do we know if the regulation is Law, or is guidance?
Firstly the word 'regulation' often infers a legal act, and that is the first clue, for a regulation to become law it must first be passed by parliament as an 'act', the process used to pass all laws, if a regulation has not been passed by parliament it is not Law.
Any regulation not passed by act of parliament is just a guideline and used more as a standard rather than an enforced rule.
So why have regulations if they are not enforced under law?
The simple answer is so that all who are following the examples used in the regulations will be 'inline' with good practice techniques and tried and tested guides. Very useful for people like us who carry out electrical installations all over the country for an example.
Now let us take BS7671 as our example, it is after all more what we all know and use each and every day.
We are all fully aware that these regulations are not law, it has been pointed out in a number of cases and was a couple of years ago brought to a definitive close when a Scottish court judge concluded that BS7671 was not law and therefore not admissible in a court of law as a tool for prosecution. The argument here could be that if it is not law then non conformity to these regulations would not result in a prosecution. Well that would be very foolish and I will explain.
The court case that was brought before the Scottish Court was brought under the BS7671 regulations, the simple fact that they are not law led the Judge to come to the only conclusion that the evidence brought was not acceptable. Arguments followed that BS7671 could be used as a yardstick as to what was right, and what was wrong, but this is were common sense and the law differ, the law deals with facts and the fact here was BS7671 is not law, therefore any argument placed on the basis of BS7671 could not be entered.
An outline of this case and the resulting responses can be found here:
TEF post
What we now have to consider is what outcome could have been achieved if the prosecution was brought under a statute regulation?
We have already established that BS7671 is not law, but many things that constitute those regulations are. So what are they?
Well this is where you come in, many regulations are in force during our normal day to day existence that are statutory and we often overlook them. As an exercise look over my post and the link provided and see if you could have come up with a successful prosecution.
I normally exclude members who I think could provide direct answers, however in this case I will allow Sidewinder to interject
