ABSTRACT
In the latter case, Lord Goff also utilised the Thirteenth Report (on s 16). The use of this principle of construction in the cases decided under the TAs is noted at various points in this text. On the other hand, there are notable instances of the judicial reluctance to adopt this approach to construction. In Gomez,24 for instance, the majority of the House of Lords declined to consider the Eighth Report on the grounds, first, that it would not serve any useful purpose and, secondly, that there was already a decision of the House of Lords on that very point. Lord Lowery in a strong dissenting judgment, however, made the point that the majority were, in effect, defeating Parliament’s intention in enacting provisions which were virtually identical to the proposals of the CLRC. There have now been significant comments on this issue in the recent decision in Hinks.25 Lord Steyn, in providing a summary of the evolution of the law relating to s 1(1), referred to the use of the Eighth Report as being ‘relevant as part of the background against which Parliament enacted the Bill which became the 1968 Act’.26 Nonetheless, there was no doubt in his Lordship’s mind that logical limits must be placed on such a technique of construction and he could see no reason to disagree with the views on this matter expressed in Gomez: ‘The starting point must be the words of the statute as interpreted by the House in its previous decisions’.27
