No 174 The Rehabilitation of Offenders (Exceptions) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order (Northern Ireland) 2014

The 1979 Order disapplies specified provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 to allow questions to be asked about spent convictions in order to assess a person’s suitability for admission to certain occupations or to hold certain types of employment, licences or permits. It also allows spent convictions, or a failure to disclose them, to be grounds for excluding a person from these occupations or for making decisions in relation to those types of employments, licences and permits.

Articles 3 and 4 of this Order update the 1979 Order to permit the Financial Conduct Authority to take spent convictions into account when exercising certain functions under the Payment Services Regulations 2009 and the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 relating to payment institutions and electronic money institutions.

These functions were previously included in the 1979 Order by The Rehabilitation of Offenders (Exceptions) (Amendment) Order (Northern Ireland) 2012 but consequential amendments arising from The Financial Services Act 2012 that were contained in The Financial Services Act 2012 (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Order 2013 inadvertently omitted these functions from the substituted text to be inserted into the 1979 Order.

Articles 3 and 4 correct this oversight by re-instating the omitted text to ensure that the Financial Conduct Authority can operate consistently across all jurisdictions of the United Kingdom.