ABSTRACT
It is unsatisfactory to lump together thieves and swindlers in this way.91 There is a common sense moral distinction between theft and obtaining property by deception. In simple terms, theft is normally regarded as a crime when an owner is deprived of his property against his wishes and often without his knowledge,92 whereas deception somehow implies tricking a victim into ‘consenting’ to part with his property. This view can no longer be supported after Gomez. This was surely not the intention of the CLRC, ‘... obtaining by false pretences is ordinarily thought of as different from theft ... To create a new offence of theft to include conduct which ordinary people would find difficult to regard as theft would be a mistake’.93 In his dissenting judgment in Gomez, Lord Lowry went to some length to explain that the ruling in Lawrence and the decision of the majority in Gomez were inconsistent with the intention of the Report of the CLRC94 upon which the TA 1968 had been based. But, in reference to this Report, Lord Keith, speaking for the majority, ruled in crystalline terms that ‘... it serves no useful purpose at the present time to seek to construe the relevant provisions of the Theft Act by reference to the report which preceded it’. It is submitted that it is valid to ask, why not?
