R v JF Alford Transport Ltd; R v James Alford; R v Peter Alex Payne [1997] 2 Cr App R 326
Divers pleading guilty; Whether company and managers positively encouraged drivers’ illegal acts
Facts
The first defendant was a lorry operator transport company; the second defendant was its managing director while the third was the transport manager. The police seized company records at the company’s premises including tachograph records and timesheets showing extensive discrepancies. The individual drivers responsible pleaded guilty to offences such as maing a false entry on the tachograph record (s. 99(5) of the Transport Act 1968). The defendants were in turn convicted of aiding and abbeting the drivers’ offences. They appealed.
Issues
The defendants argued that the trial judge erred in directing the jury that aiding and abetting (under s.8 of the Accessories and Abettors Act 1861) was sufficiently established by showing passive acquiescence.
Decision/Outcome
The Court decided to allow the defendants’ appeals. It held that in the case of aiding and abetting, knowledge of the principal offence had to go hand in hand with the ability to control the offender’s actions and the deliberate decision not to do so. In other words, it should have been proved that each defendant intended to do the acts of which they knew were able to assist or encourage the commission of the crime; but did not need to have intended that commission of the principal crime itself. For instance, simply turning a blind eye to avoid confrontation with the drivers would have been no defence. However, in the present case, there was not enough evidence to show that the defendants even knew about the principal offence. Consequently, the convictions had to be quashed.
Updated 20 March 2026
This case summary remains broadly accurate as a statement of the law on aiding and abetting as it stood in 1997. The case is still cited as authority for the proposition that passive acquiescence alone is insufficient to establish secondary liability, and that knowledge combined with the ability and deliberate decision not to prevent the principal offence is required.
However, readers should be aware of a significant development in the law of secondary liability. In R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8, the Supreme Court restated the mental element required for accessorial liability, holding that the doctrine of joint enterprise as previously understood (in particular the so-called Chan Wing-Siu principle of parasitic accessory liability) had been wrongly decided. While Jogee is primarily concerned with joint enterprise rather than the specific employer/employee aiding and abetting scenario addressed in Alford Transport, it clarified that the correct mental element for secondary liability is intention to assist or encourage, not mere foresight. This is broadly consistent with the principle in Alford Transport, but students should read both cases together to understand the current legal position on secondary liability.
Section 8 of the Accessories and Abettors Act 1861 and section 99(5) of the Transport Act 1968 both remain in force, though the latter has been substantially amended and supplemented by later transport legislation. Students researching the regulatory framework for tachographs should consult current legislation, including the retained EU law on drivers’ hours.
