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Pecuniary Penalties: Guidance for Legislative Design - Government Response to Law Commission Report [2015] NZLCGovResp 133

Last Updated: 5 January 2017

Government Response

The Government Response to the Law Commission’s recommendations on the Law Relating to Civil Penalties

The Government responded to each of the Law Commission’s recommendations as follows.

• R1: Accepted the recommendation that the Ministry of Justice should be consulted on all proposals for pecuniary penalties at the policy development stage.
• R2: Accepted in principle the recommendation for a chapter on pecuniary penalty regimes to be incorporated into the LAC Guidelines on Process and Content of Legislation, subject to the Ministry doing further work to analyse the guidelines proposed by the Law Commission in consultation with affected departments and the Parliamentary Counsel Office.
• R3: Accepted in principle the recommendation that the Parliamentary Counsel Office draft model provisions for common pecuniary penalty provisions, subject to further work being done on model provisions.
• R4: Accepted in principle the recommendation that existing pecuniary penalty provisions in statutes should be reviewed against the proposed guidelines when those statutes come up for review.
• R5, 6: Proposed to do further work on the recommendations to (1) amend the Evidence Act 2006 to provide for a privilege against self-exposure to a pecuniary penalty, and (2) to limit or remove that proposed privilege from existing pecuniary penalty statutes where justified. The Ministry was directed to report back to the Minister of Justice by the end of 2015.
• R7: Accepted the recommendation to instigate a review of how maximum criminal and pecuniary penalties should be set in legislation, but to progress this as other priorities allow.
• R8: Proposed to do further work on the recommendation to supplement Cabinet Office Circular CO (O2) 4, so as to require departmental analysis of the impact of proposed new pecuniary penalties on Crown liability. The Ministry was directed to report back to the Minister of Justice by the end of 2015.
• R9: Accepted the recommendation that enforcement agencies with the power to commence pecuniary penalty proceedings should develop and publish enforcement policies, and encouraged those enforcement agencies which do not have such policies in place to do so.