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    Teenager gets criminal conviction over £1.67 bill on surprise birthday gift in new fast-track court scandal
    United Kingdom

    Teenager gets criminal conviction over £1.67 bill on surprise birthday gift in new fast-track court scandal

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    33 Comments

    1. OneNormalBloke on

      A teenager has been handed a criminal conviction over £1.67 of unpaid car tax on a surprise birthday gift, for an offence committed before she had even received the vehicle.

      The 18-year-old was prosecuted by the DVLA over the bill on her new Toyota, in the latest case of harsh justice to emerge from the Single Justice Procedure.

      In a letter to the court, she explained the car was bought as a surprise 18th birthday gift from her parents, and she was entirely unaware of it when it was untaxed for a few weeks in April and early May.

      She set out how her parents were waiting to see if she passed her driving test before paying the annual £20 road tax fee.

      “As I was not the driver at the time of the offence and not aware that I owned the vehicle, I kindly ask that you review this offence”, the teenager wrote in her letter.

      But despite the circumstances, magistrate Francine Beckett, sitting in Burnley, decided to impose a criminal conviction on the teen.

      She received a six-month conditional discharge from the court, and was also ordered to settle the £1.67 bill.

      It was nearly two years ago that The Standard first exposed deep flaws in the Single Justice Procedure, a fast-track courts system which sits behind closed doors.

      Prosecutors like the DVLA do not routinely see mitigation letters, so miss the chance to withdraw cases which turn out not to be in the public interest.

      Data also shows that magistrates rarely refer cases back to prosecutors for a public interest check – even when there is compelling and often heartbreaking information in the mitigation letter – contributing to the system being nicknamed “conveyor belt justice”.

    2. SevereAstronaut6866 on

      Kind reminder that magistrates are unpaid and wholly untrained in law (they are provided 10 days of training) but have the power to sentence people up to 6 months in prison (not for SJP though). You could be sentenced by your loony retired neighbour who cannot even figure out bin days.

    3. anonymousethrowaway7 on

      I’d be mad at my parents if they cheaped out on paying the £20. Unless the car is officially SORN the tax is due. It’s £20, just pay it!!

    5. Vaxtez on

      That magistrate is a jobsworth. Sorry, but in what world does £1.67 need all of that, just let the girl pay that £1.67 and move on. No bloody need for the discharge, which is absurd. It’s just a waste of time & court resources. Shame on the DVLA & Magistrate here.

    7. simonps on

      Can she appeal this sort of thing? I know it could be expensive but having a criminal conviction could affect your future ability to get jobs. There are numerous professions where she could be excluded: Law, teaching, child care, health. 

    8. Brian-Kellett on

      So… I could buy a car (cheap) in the name of my enemy, then leave it somewhere untaxed and they end up with a criminal record and fine?

      🤔

    9. TheDisapprovingBrit on

      It sounds like she pled guilty and asked the court for leniency given the circumstances. In that case, a discharge is literally the lowest punishment the court can legally impose – they can’t not convict because of the guilty plea, so a criminal conviction was inevitable.

    10. Agitated_Custard7395 on

      Yeah the rail fare thing happened to me. Ticket machine was broken, travelled to my destination and told the staff at the station i didn’t have a ticket and wanted to pay.

      They took me to court and fined me £500, now I just jump the barrier like everyone else

    11. c057a on

      I thought a decision to charge was only agreed on if it was deemed in the public’s best interest? Maybe they forgot to ask that vital question in this case.

    12. Aggressive_Rent_4344 on

      Reminds me of the scene in Andor season 1 with the entirely bored and uninterested Imperial Judge handing out harsh sentences in a few seconds before going on to the next case.

    13. sunheadeddeity on

      The Single Justice Procedure is a huge problem. It’s a conveyer belt system based on paperwork alone and widely deployed in Covid to deal with lockdown infringements. There have been some very perverse outcomes, this is one of many that do not serve justice.

    14. SableSnail on

      They say we can’t get the criminals off the streets because the courts are clogged up and then they waste time on nonsense like this.

      How did this even get to court? What a waste of taxpayer money.

    15. TheTritagonistTurian on

      You would not believe the level of pettiness that would follow from me if I was that child’s father, I’m assuming they have records of the named individual who passed this sentence? Better believe I’d be anonymously making that persons life a living hell.

    16. Super-Attorney6017 on

      So I googled to find out what a conditional discharge is and got this:
      A six-month conditional discharge from the court means that no immediate punishment is imposed, but you must not commit any further offenses during that six-month period. If you stay out of trouble, the case is closed with no further action for the original offense

      So it sounds bad, but actually nothing happened to this person other than having to pay the £1.67? Maybe I’m misunderstanding it but that sounds fine to me. 

    17. Technical_Theme_1363 on

      All prosecution powers need to be stripped from any public body other than the CPS, the public interest test is meant to stop prosecutions such as these. Its clear where the error lies.

    18. Dark_Akarin on

      Fun new prank. Buy a crap car, give it to someone a day before tax is due. Don’t tell them 🙂

    20. Pixelated_Otaku on

      Surely this does not meet even the first criteria for prosecution, being in the public interest. I can see this disappearing once the relevant individuals see how this exposes them legally in the future.

    21. Ochib on

      Unfortunately non payment of car tax is a strict liability offence.

      guilt is established by proving the act itself (actus reus) without needing to prove the defendant’s mental state (mens rea). This means a person can be held criminally responsible for their actions even if they had no intention or knowledge of wrongdoing and took all reasonable precautions to avoid it

      All the DLVA had to prove was, was the car registered in the teenagers name and was there outstanding VED

    22. xdq on

      The DVLA apparently sent her a letter, which they probably did as I’ve received reminders in the past. This article doesn’t have any comments from the family regarding not receiving it.

      [DVLA enforcement of vehicle tax registration](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vehicle-enforcement-policy/dvla-enforcement-of-vehicle-tax-registration-and-insurance-offences)
      Being the registered keeper of an untaxed vehicle is a non-recordable offence with a £80 fine (£40 if paid in 33 days) and debt collector enforcement if unpaid, while “keeping an unregistered vehicle” is a criminal offence?
      I’m not a lawyer so don’t understand the difference between the two terms but since the latter is apparently a strict liability offence the DVLA would likely want to pursue someone, even if they did acknowledge her mitigation. i.e. if she was only the keeper, then it would be her parents guilty of “keeping” the vehicle instead.

      The penalty for the “keeping an unregistered vehicle” is supposed to be the greater of £1000 or 5x the tax, so she got off lightly in terms of the fine but personally I’d want my day in court to avoid a criminal conviction.

    23. QuirkyImage on

      Whatever happened to common sense?
      DLVA should be ashamed I am sure she would have just paid rather than going through this rigmarole which probably cost the tax payer a lot more than £1.67

    25. simondrawer on

      How can you own a vehicle and not be aware of it? Sounds like her parents fraudulently registered it in her name.

    26. boldstrategy on

      It should have never have got this far, but for those saying Magistrate Courts are mental, do Jury Service. People are equally as insane.

    27. Proud_Structure3595 on

      And people wonder why nobody has any faith in our institutions anymore.

      Commit a violent crime. Serve little of your sentence because no space in prisons.

      Don’t pay tax on a vechicle you didn’t know you owed. 6 months and a mark on your record.

      Something is seriously wrong in this country.

    28. antyone on

      it probably cost them more to send the bill than the money received from said bill would bring, what an absolute fucking joke and a waste of resources..

    29. Odd-Evening-7888 on

      And yet Labour want to take the vast majority of criminal trials out of the reach of a jury, the cornerstone of our freedom. Great job guys, way to speed run to a Reform victory.

      (No I am not defending the Conservatives and will happily acknowledge austerity is the cause behind this.)

    30. zephyrthewonderdog on

      Anecdotal example of magistrates.

      Local dickhead is in magistrates court for driving without due care and attention and other motoring offences. He had run someone over on a zebra crossing. He stands up and claims it wasn’t due to his poor driving ability as he actually ‘wanted to kill that fucking cunt’.

      Magistrates continue to find him guilty of various driving offences and discuss how many points on his licence/driving ban/ fines.

      Both the police and the clerk interrupt proceedings to point out he has just admitted attempted murder. The magistrates completely missed it.

    31. Ell2509 on

      Was this a strict liability offence? Because if not, there is no mens rea, and this should have been dismissed as not guilty.

      Edit: checked it, she pled guilty herself. She should have pled not guilty. Seems that it could have been avoided.

    32. Visual_Leadership_35 on

      And yet despite numerous reports neither the dvla nor met have visited my neighbour who has had no mot, tax or insurance for half a year.

    33. frantic_calm on

      I don’t understand how I can, with a cursory reading of the article, reach a totally different conclusion from the magistrate.