DPP v Coulter

A procedural guidance booklet does not, without more, determine whether a statutory requirement to provide breath specimens is lawful. Failure to follow guidance concerning a period of waiting before testing does not invalidate a request made under section 7 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Such non-compliance may, in an appropriate case, affect the reliability of a specimen actually provided, but it cannot provide a defence to a charge of failing to provide a specimen where no specimen was given.

The defendant was charged under section 7(6) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 with failing, without reasonable excuse, to provide breath specimens at a police station. The magistrates held that there was no case to answer because the officer had not waited 20 minutes after the defendant said that he might have eaten a tic-tac, as advised by paragraph A13 of the station procedure booklet.

The Director of Public Prosecutions stated a case concerning whether the officer’s failure to follow that procedure rendered the request for specimens unlawful.

1. The case was limited to the four corners of the case stated. The court therefore declined to rely on an affidavit concerning the course of argument.
2. Section 7 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 authorises a constable, subject to the statutory provisions, to require two breath specimens for analysis by an approved device. Section 7(6) creates the offence of failing, without reasonable excuse, to provide a specimen when required, and section 7(7) requires a warning about the consequences of failure.
3. Nothing in section 7 made the statutory requirement unlawful because the guidance in paragraph A13 of the station procedure booklet had not been followed. The guidance was not itself a statutory precondition to the validity of the request.
4. Failure to follow the guidance could, in some circumstances, bear on the reliability of a specimen that had actually been provided. That issue did not arise because the defendant provided no specimen. There was also no evidence that the possible consumption of a tic-tac affected any reading or caused the refusal.
5. The magistrates were wholly wrong to conclude that there was no case to answer. The case was remitted to the same court, with the judgment of the High Court, for continuation of the hearing.

1. High Court (Administrative Court): on a case stated by the Justices for De Brycheiniog sitting at Brecon, held that the magistrates were wrong to find no case to answer and remitted the matter for continuation.