Statutory Interpretation in UK Law

Statutory interpretation is an exercise which requires the court to identify the meaning borne by the words in question in the particular context. The task of the court is often said to be to ascertain the intention of Parliament expressed in the language under consideration. The phrase is a shorthand reference to the intention which the court reasonably imputes to Parliament in respect of the language used.

The days have long passed when the courts adopted a strict constructionist view of interpretation which required them to adopt the literal meaning of the language. The courts now adopt a purposive approach which seeks to give effect to the true purpose of legislation and are prepared to look at much extraneous material that bears upon the background against which the legislation was enacted.

During the last 30 years there has been a shift away from literalist to purposive methods of construction. Where there is no obvious meaning of a statutory provision the modern emphasis is on a contextual approach designed to identify the purpose of a statute and to give effect to it.

But where Parliament has conferred on the executive an administrative discretion without indicating the precise limits within which it must be exercised, to presume that it must be exercised within Convention limits would be to go far beyond the resolution of an ambiguity.

But, as I am sure Lord Brightman would be the first to acknowledge, the Ramsay approach is no more than a useful aid. The paramount question always is one of interpretation of the particular statutory provision and its application to the facts of the case. Where this leads depends upon the particular set of facts and the particular statute.

Fundamental rights cannot be overridden by general or ambiguous words. This is because there is too great a risk that the full implications of their unqualified meaning may have passed unnoticed in the democratic process. In the absence of express language or necessary implication to the contrary, the courts therefore presume that even the most general words were intended to be subject to the basic rights of the individual.

The initial judicial approach is the same as with the interpretation of any other statute. The judge places himself, as the saying goes, in the draftsman's chair. Since the draftsman will himself have endeavoured to express the parliamentary meaning by words used in the primary and most natural sense which they bear in that same context, the court's interpretation of the meaning of the statutory words used should thus coincide with what parliament meant to say.