Import, Export and Customs Powers (Defence) Act 1939
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Citation | 1939 c. 69 |
| Year | 1939 |
Import, Export and Customs Powers (Defence) Act, 1939
(2 & 3 Geo. 6.) CHAPTER 69.
An Act to provide for controlling the importation, exportation and carriage coastwise of goods and the shipment of goods as ships' stores; to provide for facilitating the enforcement of the law relating to the matters aforesaid and the law relating to trading with the enemy; and to provide for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.
[1st September 1939]
Be it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
1 Control of importation and exportation.
(1) The Board of Trade may by order make such provisions as the Board think expedient for prohibiting or regulating, in all cases or any specified classes of cases, and subject to such exceptions, if any, as may be made by or under the order, the importation into, or exportation from, the United Kingdom or any specified part thereof, or the carriage coastwise or the shipment as ships' stores, of all goods or goods of any specified description.
(2) An order under this section may be varied or revoked by a subsequent order.
(3) An order under this section may suspend wholly or in part the operation of any enactment, proclamation, Order in Council or order prohibiting or regulating the importation, exportation, shipment as ships' stores or carriage coastwise of any goods; and an order under this section may contain such provisions (including penal provisions) as appear to the Board of Trade to be necessary for securing the due operation and enforcement of the order.
(4) For the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that, without prejudice to the provisions of the enactments relating to customs with respect to ships and aircraft, the taking into or out of the United Kingdom of ships or aircraft may be prohibited or regulated by an order under this section as an importation or exportation of goods, notwithstanding that the ships or aircraft are conveying goods or passengers, and whether or not they are moving under their own power.
(5) Notwithstanding anything in section eleven of the Customs and Inland Revenue Act, 1879 , a prosecution for an offence under an order made in pursuance of this section may, in England or Northern Ireland, be instituted by, or under the authority of, the Board of Trade.
2 Power to impose charges.
(1) The Treasury may by order provide for imposing and recovering, in connection with any scheme of control contained in an order under the preceding section, such charges as may be specified in the first-mentioned order; and any order under this section may be varied or revoked by a subsequent order of the Treasury.
(2) Any charges recovered by virtue of such an order as aforesaid shall be paid into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or, if the order so directs, be paid into such public fund or account as may be specified in the order.
(3) Any order under this section shall be laid before the Commons House of Parliament as soon as may be after it is made, but, notwithstanding anything in subsection (4) of section one of the Rules Publication Act, 1893 , shall be deemed not to be a statutory rule to which that section applies.
(4) Any such order as aforesaid imposing or increasing a charge shall cease to have effect on the expiration of the period of twenty-eight days beginning with the day on which the order is made, unless at some time before the expiration of that period it has been approved by a resolution of the Commons House of Parliament, without prejudice, however, to the validity of anything previously done under the order or to the making of a new order.
In reckoning any period of twenty-eight days for the purposes of this subsection, no account shall be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued, or during which the Commons House is adjourned for more than four days.
3 Application and extension of law as to prohibited goods.
(1) If any goods—
(a ) are imported, exported, carried coastwise or shipped as ships' stores in contravention either of an order under this Act or of the law relating to trading with the enemy, or
(b ) are brought to any quay or other place, or waterborne, for the purpose of being exported or of being so carried or shipped in contravention either of an order under this Act or of the law relating to trading with the enemy,
those goods shall be deemed to be prohibited goods and shall be forfeited; and the exporter of the goods or his agent, or the shipper of the goods, shall be liable, in addition to any other penalty under the enactments relating to customs, to a customs penalty of five hundred pounds.
(2) If any such order as aforesaid prohibits the exportation of any goods unless consigned to a particular place or person, and such goods so consigned are delivered otherwise than to that place or...
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