Direct Effect in UK Law

Personal circumstances of an occupier, personal hardship, the difficulties of businesses which are of value to the character of a community are not to be ignored in the administration of planning control. It would be inhuman pedantry to exclude from the control of our environment the human factor. It can, however, and sometimes should, be given direct effect as an exceptional or special circumstance.

Fairness will very often require that a person who may be adversely affected by the decision will have an opportunity to make representations on his own behalf either before the decision is taken with a view to producing a favourable result: or after it is taken, with a view to procuring its modification; or both.

Fourth, although the disclosure need not definitively prove the assertion that the product works for the designated purpose, there must be something that would cause the skilled person to think that there was a reasonable prospect that the assertion would prove to be true.

Where a defendant and his assets are located outside the jurisdiction of the court seised of the substantive proceedings, it is in my opinion most appropriate that protective measures should be granted by those courts best able to make their orders effective.

But even then, the metaphor of incorporation may be misleading. Of course there is a strong presumption in favour of interpreting English law (whether common law or statute) in a way which does not place the United Kingdom in breach of an international obligation.

This decision of the European Court of Justice as to the effect of Article 86 is one which section 3(1) of the European Communities Act 1972 requires your Lordships to follow. The rights which the Article confers upon citizens in the United Kingdom accordingly fall within section 2(1) of the Act. They are without further enactment to be given legal effect in the United Kingdom and enforced accordingly.

The Directive 76/207 does not have direct effect upon the relationship between a worker and an employer who is not the State or an emanation of the State, but nevertheless it is for a United Kingdom court to construe domestic legislation in any field covered by a Community Directive so as to accord with the interpretation of the Directive as laid down by the European Court, if that can be done without distorting the meaning of the domestic legislation: Duke v. G.E.C. Reliance Ltd. [1988] A.C. 618, per Lord Templeman at pp. 639-640.