The three defendants had been charged with attempting to take a motor bus without authority. They had gone to a bus garage late at night and attempted to start the engine of a bus without success. The trial judge directed the jury as follows, adverting specifically to the change of language between section 12 of the Act of 1968 and section 217 of the Act of 1960. He said: ‘The offence is not, I repeat, the offence is not taking and driving away, it is merely taking and taking, members of the jury, means assuming possession of an object for your own unauthorised use, however temporary that assumption of possession might be. Kay I give you an example. Suppose that you left your motor car parked in the car park behind a cinema, and you forgot to lock the door but you shut the door, and suppose that a man and a woman, some time later, when the motor car was unattended, came along, opened the door, got into the car, and had sexual intercourse in the car. This particular offence would then have been committed by them’. Later he said with respect to the defendants before him: ‘The question is: Did they, without the permission of the owners, acquire possession, for however short a time, for their own unauthorised purpose? That is the question.’
Held: Roskill LJ said: ‘ ‘The word ‘take’ is an ordinary simple English word and it is undesirable that where Parliament has used an ordinary simple English word elaborate glosses should be put upon it. What is sought to be said is that ‘take’ is the equivalent of ‘use’ and that mere unauthorised user of itself constitutes an offence against section 12. It is to be observed that if one treats ‘takes’ as a synonym for ‘uses’, the subsection has to be read in this way: ‘if . . he uses any conveyance for his own or another’s use . . ‘ That involves the second employment of the word ‘use’ being tautologous, and this court can see no justification where Parliament has used the phrase ‘if . . he takes any conveyance for his own or another’s use’ for construing this language as meaning if he ‘uses any conveyance for his own or another’s use,’ thus giving no proper effect to the words ‘for his own or another’s use.’ For those reasons the court accepts Mr. Lowry’s submission that there is still built in, if I may use the phrase, to the word ‘takes’ in the subsection the concept of movement and that before a man can be convicted of the completed offence under section 12 (1) it must be shown that he took the vehicle, that is to say, that there was an unauthorised taking possession or control of the vehicle by him adverse to the rights of the true owner or person otherwise entitled to such possession or control, coupled with some movement, however small . . of that vehicle following such unauthorised taking.’
Roskill LJ
[1973] 1 QB 832
Theft Act 1968 12, Traffic Act 1960 217
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Regina v Bow CACD 24-Nov-1976
The defendant appealed against his conviction for taking a motor vehicle without authority.
Held: Bridge LJ said: ‘where as here, a conveyance is taken and moved in a way which necessarily involves its use as a conveyance, the taker cannot be . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 24 July 2021; Ref: scu.544330
