Chapter Updates

Chapter 3: Statutory interpretation

The limits of Pepper v Hart?

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, hearing a criminal appeal to the Queen’s Bench Divisional Court in the case of Thet v Director of Public Prosecutions, 2006, questioned whether the ‘rule in Pepper v Hart’ (which would allow, in certain cases, reference to parliamentary material to resolve an ambiguity in a statute – see textbook at pp60-61) was appropriate to be used in support of a criminal prosecution. This could lead to a situation where criminal liability was imposed on a person not because of the statute itself, but because the parliamentary material read in conjunction with the statute was seen to extend its scope and therefore support the imposition of criminal liability. The Lord Chief Justice preferred the argument that if a criminal statute was ambiguous, ‘the defendant should have the benefit of the ambiguity’.

The case concerned the provisions of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004, which imposes criminal liability on asylum seekers not in possession of appropriate immigration documentation, subject to a set of statutory defences. Mr Thet was a Burmese national who sought to rely on these defences, having been unable to obtain a genuine UK passport whilst a ‘political prisoner’ in his home-land. The Lord Chief Justice found that these circumstances afforded Mr Thet a defence to the charge and, with the agreement of Mr Justice Roderick Evans, allowed his appeal.