Interpreting Statutory Purpose – Lessons from Yemshaw v Hounslow London Borough Council
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Author | Chris Bevan |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12033 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
kettling should also be subject to this more rigorous standard on each occasion.
To permit otherwise would stray too far from the text and protections against
certain deprivations of liberty that could otherwise be offered by Article 5.
Interpreting Statutory Purpose – Lessons from Yemshaw v
Hounslow London Borough Council
Chris Bevan*
Yemshaw vHounslow LBC is a significant case in the fields of housing and family law, as well as
giving rise to important issues as to the judicial role and statutory interpretation more broadly.
This note critically analyses the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Yemshaw, in which the
principal issue was whether the definition of ‘violence’ for the purposes of the Housing Act 1996
extended to non-physical as well as physical forms of harm. In rejecting the view of the Court of
Appeal, the Supreme Court adopted a wider definition of violence to encompass emotional and
psychological as well as financial abuse. This commentary adopts a fresh stance by examining
closely the context surrounding the enactment of the Housing Act 1996 and how this informs
the question of statutory interpretation. In so doing, the author suggests that the interpretation
employed by the court is significantly undermined.
INTRODUCTION
Much has been written both within and without the context of housing law
about the case of Yemshaw vHounslow LBC1(Yemshaw). Academic commentary
in leading journals, both generalist and specialist, has reported in some consid-
erable detail the rationale and reasoning of the Supreme Court in this evidently
significant decision, and rightly so: this judgment indeed represents an important
moment for those interested in the fields of homelessness law and domestic
violence law as well as the discipline of legal jurisprudence more widely. What
has not, however, been considered by any academic review is the extent to
which, against the particular political backdrop which gave rise to the Housing
Act 1996 (the 1996 Act), Lady Hale’s interpretation of statutory purpose in
Yemshaw measures up when subjected to critical examination and scrutiny. This
is crucial as the interpretation afforded to the statutory purpose provided the
central jurisprudential foundation upon which the decision as to the scope of
the definition of ‘violence’ was ultimately based. If the interpretation adopted by
the court (and by Lady Hale more specifically) fails to stand up to reasoned
critique then this casts serious doubt on the judgment as a whole.
*Barrister, KCH Chambers, Nottingham.
1Yemshaw vHounslow LBC [2011] UKSC 3. See amongst others C. J. S. Knight, ‘Doing (linguistic)
violence to prevent (domestic) violence?’ (2012) 24 Child and Family Law Quarterly 95; J. Miles,
‘Defining “domestic violence”: housing law and beyond’ (2011) 70 CLJ 511.
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Interpreting Statutory Purpose
© 2013 The Author. The Modern Law Review © 2013 The Modern Law Review Limited.
742 (2013) 76(4) MLR 735–756
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