Reforming the Substantive Law of Fraud
| Published date | 01 August 1988 |
| Date | 01 August 1988 |
| Author | G. R. Sullivan |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201838805200308 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
REFORMING
THE
SUBSTANTIVE
LAW
OF
FRAUD
G. R. Sullivan"
The Law Commission Working Paper No. 104 on conspiracy to
defraud is a substantial document of some 185 pages of text with
afurther 51 pages of appendices. Such expansiveness was necessary
to do justice to the important questions of whether conspiracy to
defraud should be abolished and, if it is abolished, whether it
should be replaced by a broadly framed general offence of fraud
or whether the consequent gaps in the coverage of the criminal
law arising from the abolition should be covered by a series of
discrete statutory offences. The working paper is an acute and
comprehensive review of the difficult issues arising.
The
reader is
admirably informed of the pros and cons of the several directions
the future law could take.
The need for immediate reform in this area of law has, perhaps,
lost some of its urgency with the enactment of section 12 of the
Criminal Justice Act 1987. Section 12 restores the full operational
ambit of conspiracy to defraud in allowing a charge of conspiracy
to defraud to be brought even though the facts alleged might, in
addition to founding the conspiracy to defraud charge, found proof
of a statutory conspiracy to commit other specific, nominate
offences.
It
will be recalled that the House of Lords in R. vAyresl
interpreted the Criminal Law Act 1977 as precluding a charge of
common law conspiracy to defraud if the facts additionally disclosed
any statutory conspiracy to commit a specific common law or
statutory offence. The effect of this decision, as subsequently
applied, was to stymie conspiracy to defraud charges even if the
nominate offence in question failed to reflect the true nature or
gravity of the wrongdoing." There followed a marked decrease in
• Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Durham.
I[1984) A.C. 447.
2As in, for example, R. vTonner (1985)1 W.L.R. 344, and R. vPain
lory
and
Hawkins (1986) J.P. 65.
288
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