TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1992 (11) TMI 271
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....riginally a point of interpretation of the statutory provisions governing the valuation of benefits for the purpose of income tax under Schedule E, in particular, the interpretation and application to the facts found of section 63(1) and (2) of the Finance Act 1976. After the hearing but before judgment it was decided that there should be a further hearing before an Appellate Committee of seven Lords to determine the issue whether, and in what circumstances, Parliamentary debates on a Bill might be used as an aid to construction of the ensuing Act, in particular, the relevance of certain extracts from Hansard to the construction of the provisions of the Finance Acts at issue in the consolidated appeals. The facts are stated in the opinion of Lord Browne-Wilkinson. Stephen Oliver Q. C. and Jeremy Woolf, for the taxpayers at the first hearing. Alan Moses Q. C. and Timothy Brennan, for the Crown at the first hearing. Anthony Lester Q. C., Jeremy Woolf and Clive Sheldon, for the taxpayers at the second hearing. Sir Nicholas Lyell Q. C., A. C, Alan Moses Q. C., Timothy Brennan and Rabinder Singh, for the Crown at th....
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....red upon the taxpayers was one which logically followed only when it was determined that there were surplus places and the authorities of the college in their discretion agreed to admit the taxpayers' children to these places. This decision was the decision to provide the benefit to the taxpayers' children and this decision involved no further expense on the college. I conclude that looking at the matter from the point of view of expense incurred and not from the point of view of loss to the employer no expense could be regarded as having been incurred as a result of the decision of the authorities of the college to provide this particular benefit to the taxpayer. Notwithstanding the views that have found favour with others I consider this to be a reasonable construction of the statutory provisions and I am comforted in the fact that, apart from an attempt to tax airline employees, which was taken to the special commissioners who decided in favour of the taxpayer, this has been the practice of the Inland Revenue in applying the relevant words where they have occurred in the Income Tax Acts for so long as they have been in force, until they initiated the present cases. ....
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....able : (a) to confirm the meaning of a provision as conveyed by the text, its object and purpose ; (b) to determine a meaning where the provision is ambiguous or obscure ; or (c) to determine the meaning where the ordinary meaning is manifestly absurd or unreasonable. I believe that practically every question of statutory construction that comes before the courts will involve an argument that the case falls under one or more of these three heads. It follows that the parties' legal advisors will require to study Hansard in practically every such case to see whether or not there is any help to be gained from it. I believe this is an objection of real substance. It is a practical objection not one of principle, and I believe that it was the fundamental reason that Lord Reid, for example, considered the general rule to be a good one as he said in the passage my noble and learned friend has cited from Beswick v. Beswick [1968] A.C. 58, 74a. Lord Reid's statement is, I think, worthy of particular weight since he was a parliamentarian of great experience as well as a very distinguished judicial member of your Lordships' House. It is significant that in the following year, i....
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....a well established rule which could have a substantial effect in increasing these costs against the advice of the Law Commissions and the Renton Committee unless and until a new inquiry demonstrated that that advice was no longer valid. I do not for my part find the objections in principle to be strong and I would certainly be prepared to agree the rule should no longer be adhered to were it not for the practical consideration to which I have referred and which my noble and learned friend agrees to be of real substance. Reference to proceedings in Parliament has already been allowed in Pickstone v. Freemans Plc. [1989] A.C. 66 without, I think, any argument upon whether or not it was permissible for ascertaining the purpose of subordinate legislation and also in other cases for ascertaining the purpose for which a power to make subordinate legislation was used. I believe that such statements are likely to be readily identified in Parliamentary proceedings and the cases in which they are relevant will be determined by the nature of the subject matter. Allowing reference to Hansard in such cases does not have the large practical consequences to which I have referred. If reference ....
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....ct to taxing legislation in such a way as to impose a tax which the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, during the passage of the Bill containing the relevant provision, had, in effect, assured the House of Commons it was not intended to impose. It was this which led to the appeal being re-argued before the Appellate Committee of seven which now reports to the House. Following the further arguments of which we have had the benefit, I should find it very difficult, in conscience, to reach a conclusion adverse to the appellants on the basis of a technical rule of construction requiring me to ignore the very material which in this case indicates unequivocally which of the two possible interpretations of section 63(2) of the Act of 1976 was intended by Parliament. But, for all the reasons given by my noble and learned friend, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, with whose speech I entirely agree, I am not placed in that invidious situation. It should, in my opinion, only be in the rare cases where the very issue of interpretation which the courts are called on to resolve has been addressed in Parliamentary debate and where the promoter of the legislation has made a clear statement directed t....
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....ssist the court to give effect to the true intention of Parliament is not "questioning" within the meaning of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. I agree that the House is not inhibited by any Parliamentary privilege in deciding this appeal. I cannot agree with the view that consulting Hansard will add so greatly to the cost of litigation, that on this ground alone we should refuse to do so. Modern technology greatly facilitates the recall and display of material held centrally. I have to confess that on many occasions I have had recourse to Hansard, of course only to check if my interpretation had conflicted with an express Parliamentary intention, but I can say that it does not take long to recall and assemble the relevant passages in which the particular section was dealt with in Parliament, nor does it take long to see if anything relevant was said. Furthermore if the search resolves the ambiguity it will in future save all the expense that would otherwise be incurred in fighting the rival interpretations through the courts. We have heard no suggestion that recourse to Parliamentary history has significantly increased the cost of litigation in Australia or New Zealand and I do ....
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....alary level at which the tax bit was GBP5,000 a year, it will put the travel facilities attached to their employment out of the reach of many airline and rail employees. Probably the most universally provided "perk" is the company car. Parliament has introduced taxation of this "perk" but upon a gradually increasing scale still short of the true value of the use of the car _ no doubt because to have introduced it at its full value would have been seen as an unfair and unacceptable increase in the burden of taxation in one year on those who enjoyed the "perk" and of course the future of the British motor industry would be taken into account. It is against this background that I approached the construction and which led me to prefer the interpretation which bases the assessment to tax upon the actual cost to the employer rather than the hypothetical cost arrived at by dividing the number of pupils into the total cost of providing full facilities. I should make it clear that my construction did not depend upon the children of the staff taking up surplus places in the sense that if there were sufficient fee paying pupils, the staff's children would not be given a place. The cruc....
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....f a particular rule of the law which he is enjoined, sometimes under penalty, to obey and by which he is both expected and entitled to regulate his conduct. We must, therefore, I believe, be very cautious in opening the door to the reception of material not readily or ordinarily accessible to the citizen whose rights and duties are to be affected by the words in which the legislature has elected to express its will. But experience shows that language _ and, particularly, language adopted or concurred in under the pressure of a tight Parliamentary timetable _ is not always a reliable vehicle for the complete or accurate translation of legislative intention ; and I have been persuaded, for the reasons so cogently deployed in the speech of my noble and learned friend, that the circumstances of this case demonstrate that there is both the room and the necessity for a limited relaxation of the previously well-settled rule which excludes reference to Parliamentary history as an aid to statutory construction. It is, however, important to stress the limits within which such a relaxation is permissible and which are set out in the speech of my noble and learned friend. It can apply on....
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.... result from a literal construction of the word "cost" in the case of a loss-making concern such as British Rail or a heavily endowed institution, where the employee's benefit would have to be valued at a figure in excess indeed, it may be many times in excess-of the market price of the service provided. The references to Hansard which are set out in the speech of my noble and learned friend, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, put it beyond doubt that that could not have been the intention of Parliament in enacting the section. Accordingly, I, too, would allow the appeal. I would add only that I find myself quite unable to see how referring to the reports of Parliamentary debates in order to determine the meaning of the words which Parliament has employed could possibly be construed as "questioning" or "impeaching" the freedom of speech or debate or proceedings in Parliament or as otherwise infringing the provisions of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. Lord Browne-Wilkinson. My Lords, the underlying subject matter of these tax appeals is the correct basis for valuing benefits in kind received by the taxpayers who are schoolmasters. However in the circumstances which I will relate, the....
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....e E, an amount equal to whatever is the cash equivalent of the benefit." The crucial question relates to the amount which is to be treated as an emolument, i.e., what is "the cash equivalent of the benefit." These words are defined by section 63(1) and (2) as follows : " (1) The cash equivalent of any benefit chargeable to tax under section 61 above is an amount equal to the cost of the benefit, less so much (if any) of it as is made good by the employee to those providing the benefit. (2) Subject to the following subsections, the cost of a benefit is the amount of any expense incurred in or in connection with its provision, and (here and in those subsections) includes a proper proportion of any expense relating partly to the benefit and partly to other matters. " The taxpayers contend that the only expense incurred by the school "in or in connection" with the education of their children is the additional, or marginal, cost to the school. The school was, in any event, up and running so as to provide its educational facilities for 625 boys. All the costs of running the school (staff salaries, provision of buildings and grounds, etc.) would have had to be incurred in any eve....
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....Appeal** [1991] Ch. 203. The taxpayers appeal to your Lordships' House. The case was originally argued before your Lordships without reference to any Parliamentary proceedings. After the conclusion of the first hearing, it came to your Lordships' attention that an examination of the proceedings in Parliament in 1976 which lead to the enactment of sections 61 and 63 might give a clear indication which of the two rival contentions represented the intention of Parliament in using the statutory words. Your Lordships then invited the parties to consider whether they wished to present further argument on the question whether it was appropriate for the House (under Practice Statement (Judicial Precedent) [1966] 1 W.L.R. 1234) to depart from previous authority of this House which forbids reference to such material in construing statutory provisions and, if so, what guidance such material provided in deciding the present appeal. The taxpayers indicated that they wished to present further argument on these points. The case was listed for rehearing before a committee of seven members not all of whom sat on the original committee. At the start of the further hearing, the Attorney....
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.... " That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament. " The Attorney-General, while submitting that such use of Parliamentary material would breach article 9, accepted that it was for the courts to determine the legal meaning and effect of article 9. However, the Attorney-General warned your Lordships that, even if reference in this case to Parliamentary materials did not infringe article 9, the House of Commons might take the view that the House enjoyed some wider privilege which we would be infringing and might well regret that its views on the point had not been sought before a decision was reached by your Lordships. Whilst strictly maintaining the privileges of the House of Commons, the Attorney-General used the Parliamentary materials in this case as an illustration of the dangers of so doing. Moreover, in order to assist us, whilst still maintaining the privileges of the House of Commons, he made submissions as to the effect of such material on the construction of section 63 if, contrary to his contentions and advice, we decided this appeal ....
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....venue sought to tax such employees on that benefit on the basis of the average cost to the airline of providing a seat, not merely on the marginal cost. The tax commissioners rejected such claim : the revenue did not appeal. Therefore in practice from 1948 to 1975 the revenue did not seek to extract tax on the basis of the average cost to the employer of providing in-house benefits. In 1975 the Government proposed a new tax on vouchers provided by an employer to his employees which could be exchanged for goods or services. Clause 33(1) of the Finance (No. 2) Bill 1975 provided that the employee was to be treated, on receipt of a voucher, as having received an emolument from his employment of an amount "equal to the expense incurred by the person providing the voucher in or in connection with the provision of the voucher and the money, goods or services for which it is capable of being exchanged." The statutory wording of the Bill was therefore similar to that in the Act of 1948 and in section 63(2) of the Finance Act 1976. On 1 July 1975 in the Standing Committee on the Bill (Standing Committee H), the Financial Secretary was asked about the impact of the clause on railwaymen. H....
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....ets and schoolmasters would have been taxed for concessionary education on the amount of the normal school fees. After second reading, clause 52 of the Bill was committed to a committee of the whole House and clause 54 to Standing Committee E. On 17 May 1976, the House considered clause 52 and strong representations were made about the impact of clause 52 on airline and railway employees. At the start of the meeting of Standing Committee E on 17 June 1976 (before clause 54 was being discussed) the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Robert Sheldon, made an announcement (Hansard, columns 893-895) in the following terms : " The next point I wish to make concerns services and deals with the position of employees of organisations, bodies, or firms which provide services, where the employee is in receipt of those services free or at a reduced rate. Under clause 54(4) the taxable benefit is to be based on the arm's length price of the benefit received. At present the benefit is valued on the cost to the employer. Representations have been made concerning airline travel and railway....
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....ese benefits will remain taxable but that the equivalent cost of the benefit will be calculated on some different basis? Or is he saying that these benefits will not be taxable at all ? Financial Secretary : The existing law which applies to the taxation of some of these benefits will be retained. The position will subsequently be unchanged from what it is now before the introduction of this legislation.'' The Financial Secretary was then asked to elucidate the impact of this on airline employees. At column 930, he is reported as saying : " There is a difference between the provision of services to an employee earning less than GBP5,000 and an employee earning more than GBP5,000, or one who is a director. The position is quite clear. What we are withdrawing is the arm's-length valuation of benefit under clause 54(4) where an employer is providing services to the employee at a cost which may be very little. The employee earning more than GBP5,000 or the director will be assessed on the benefit received by him on the basis of the cost to the employer rather than the p....
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....ebated in committee on 22 June 1976. A member is reported as saying, at column 1013, that " Like many others, I welcome the concession that has been made to leave out the airline staff and the railway employees and all the others that are left out by the dropping of clause 54(4). " Another member, after referring to the particular reference in the Financial Secretary's statement to airline and railway employees, asked whether the same distinction applied to services provided by hotel companies to their employees _ that is, to rooms which are freely available for the general public in hotels being offered at a concessionary rate to employees of the hotel group. In response, the Financial Secretary said of the position of such employees : " The position is, as he probably expected, the same as that which, following my announcement last week about the withdrawal of clause 54(4), applies to other employees in service industries ; the benefit is the cost to the employer. It is a good illustration of one of the reasons why I withdrew ....
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....efit will be assessed on the cost to the employer, which would be very small indeed in this case. " (column 1098.) Thereafter, clause 54 was not the subject of further debate and passed into law as it now stands as section 63 of the Act. The position can therefore be summarised as follows. The Bill as introduced sought by clause 54(4) to tax in-house benefits on a different basis from other benefits, i.e., not on the cost of the in-house benefit to the employer but on the open market price charged to the public. On the deletion of clause 54(4), in-house benefits were to be taxed on the same basis as external benefits, i.e., on the cost to the employer of providing the benefit. Numerous inquiries were made of the Financial Secretary to elucidate the resulting effect of the Bill on in-house benefits, i.e., concessionary travel for airline, railway and merchant navy employees, on benefits for hotel employees and on concessionary education for the children of teachers. In responding to each of these requests for information (save that relating to teachers), the Financial Secretary stated that the effect of the Bill would be to leave their position unchanged from the previous law.....
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.... not only for the purpose of ascertaining the mischief but also for the purpose of drawing an inference as to Parliamentary intention from the fact that Parliament had not expressly implemented one of the Law Commission's recommendations. Although the courts' attitude to reports leading to legislation has varied, until recently there was no modern case in which the court had looked at Parliamentary debates as an aid to construction. However, in Pickstone v. Freemans Plc. [1989] A.C. 66 this House, in construing a statutory instrument, did have regard to what was said by the Minister who initiated the debate on the regulations. My noble and learned friend, Lord Keith of Kinkel, at p. 112b, after pointing out that the draft Regulations were not capable of being amended when presented to Parliament, said that it was "entirely legitimate for the purpose of ascertaining the intention of Parliament to take into account the terms in which the draft was presented by the responsible minister and which formed the basis of its acceptance." My noble and learned friend, Lord Templeman, at pp. 121-122, also referred to the Minister's speech, although possibly only by way of suppor....
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..... . . I have more than once drawn attention to the practical difficulties . . . but the difficulty goes deeper. The questions which give rise to debate are rarely those which later have to be decided by the courts. One might take the views of the promoters of a Bill as an indication of the intention of Parliament but any view the promoters may have about the questions which later come before the court will not often appear in Hansard and often those questions have never occurred to the promoters. At best we might get material from which a more or less dubious inference might be drawn as to what the promoters intended or would have intended if they had thought about the matter, and it would, I think, generally be dangerous to attach weight to what some other members of either House may have said. . . . in my view, our best course is to adhere to present practice. " In the same case Lord Wilberforce said, at p. 629 : " The second [ reason ] is one of constitutional principle. Legislation in England is passed by Parliament, and put in the form of written words. This legislation is given legal ef....
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....could be looked at ; third, the need for the citizen to have access to a known defined text which regulates his legal rights ; fourth, the improbability of finding helpful guidance from Hansard. The Law Commissions of England and Scotland in their joint Report on the Interpretation of Statutes in 1969 and the Renton Committee on the Preparation of Legislation both recognised that there was much to be said in principle for relaxing the rule but advised against a relaxation at present on the same practical grounds as are reflected in the authorities. However, both bodies recommended changes in the form of legislation which would, if implemented, have assisted the court in its search for the true Parliamentary intention in using the statutory words. Mr. Lester submitted that the time has come to relax the rule to the extent which I have mentioned. He points out that the courts have departed from the old literal approach of statutory construction and now adopt a purposive approach, seeking to discover the Parliamentary intention lying behind the words used and construing the legislation so as to give effect to, rather than thwart, the intentions of Parliament. Where the words use....
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....th to consider and to understand the context in which it was made. For the courts to have regard to Parliamentary material might necessitate changes in Parliamentary procedures to ensure that ministerial statements are sufficiently detailed to be taken into account. In addition, there are all the practical difficulties as to the accessibility of Parliamentary material, the cost of researching it and the use of court time in analysing it, which are good reasons for maintaining the rule. Finally, to use what is said in Parliament for the purpose of construing legislation would be a breach of article 9 of the Bill of Rights as being an impeachment or questioning of the freedom of speech in debates in proceedings in Parliament. My Lords, I have come to the conclusion that, as a matter of law, there are sound reasons for making a limited modification to the existing rule (subject to strict safeguards) unless there are constitutional or practical reasons which outweigh them. In my judgment, subject to the questions of the privileges of the House of Commons, reference to Parliamentary material should be permitted as an aid to the construction of legislation which is ambiguous or obscur....
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.... this view. As I have said, the courts can now look at white papers and official reports for the purpose of finding the "mischief" sought to be corrected, although not at draft clauses or proposals for the remedying of such mischief. A ministerial statement made in Parliament is an equally authoritative source of such information : why should the courts be cut off from this source of information as to the mischief aimed at ? In any event, the distinction between looking at reports to identify the mischief aimed at but not to find the intention of Parliament in enacting the legislation is highly artificial. Take the normal Law Commission Report which analyses the problem and then annexes a draft Bill to remedy it. It is now permissible to look at the report to find the mischief and at the draft Bill to see that a provision in the draft was not included in the legislation enacted : see the Factortame case [1990] 2 A.C. 85. There can be no logical distinction between that case and looking at the draft Bill to see that the statute as enacted reproduced, often in the same words, the provision in the Law Commissions's draft. Given the purposive approach to construction now adopted by....
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.... the provision, reference should be allowed to that statement. Text books often include reference to explanations of legislation given by a minister in Parliament, as a result of which lawyers advise their clients taking account of such statements and judges when construing the legislation come to know of them. In addition, a number of distinguished judges have admitted to breaching the exclusionary rule and looking at Hansard in order to seek the intention of Parliament. When this happens, the parties do not know and have no opportunity to address the judge on the matter. A vivid example of this occurred in the Hadmor case [1983] 1 A.C. 191 where Lord Denning in the Court of Appeal relied on his own researches into Hansard in reaching his conclusions : in the House of Lords, counsel protested that there were other passages to which he would have wished to draw the court's attention had he known that Lord Denning was looking at Hansard : see the Hadmor case at p. 233. It cannot be right for such information to be available, by a sidewind, for the court but the parties be prevented from presenting their arguments on such material. Against these considerations, there have t....
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....s given by the minister, after opportunities for taking advice from his officials, all of which point the same way and which were not withdrawn or varied prior to the enactment of the Bill. Then it is said that court time will be taken up by considering a mass of Parliamentary material and long arguments about its significance, thereby increasing the expense of litigation. In my judgment, though the introduction of further admissible material will inevitably involve some increase in the use of time, this will not be significant as long as courts insist that Parliamentary material should only be introduced in the limited cases I have mentioned and where such material contains a clear indication from the minister of the mischief aimed at, or the nature of the cure intended, by the legislation. Attempts to introduce material which does not satisfy those tests should be met by orders for costs made against those who have improperly introduced the material. Experience in the United States of America, where legislative history has for many years been much more generally admissible than I am now suggesting, shows how important it is to maintain strict control over the use of such mater....
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....malice on the basis of such words. The submission was that the use of Hansard for the purpose of construing an Act would constitute a "questioning" of the freedom of speech or debate. The process, it is said, would involve an investigation of what the Minister meant by the words he used and would inhibit the Minister in what he says by attaching legislative effect to his words. This, it was submitted, constituted "questioning" the freedom of speech or debate. Article 9 is a provision of the highest constitutional importance and should not be narrowly construed. It ensures the ability of democratically elected Members of Parliament to discuss what they will (freedom of debate) and to say what they will (freedom of speech). But even given a generous approach to this construction, I find it impossible to attach the breadth of meaning to the word "question" which the Attorney-General urges. It must be remembered that article 9 prohibits questioning not only "in any court" but also in any "place out of Parliament." If the Attorney-General's submission is correct, any comment in the media or elsewhere on what is said in Parliament would constitute "questioning'' since all ....
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....id in the House of Commons as proof of malice. Browne J. held, rightly in my view, that such use would breach article 9 as questioning the motives and intentions of a Member of the House. To the extent that he went further so as to suggest that in no circumstances could the speeches be looked at other than for the purposes of seeing what was said on a particular date, his remarks have to be understood in the context of the issues which arose in that case. Those issues included an allegation that the defendant acted improperly in Parliament in saying what he did in Parliament. That plainly would amount to questioning a member's behaviour in Parliament and infringe article 9. In Reg. v. Secretary of State for Trade, Ex parte Anderson Strathclyde Plc. [1983] 2 All E.R. 233 an applicant for judicial review sought to adduce Parliamentary materials to prove a fact. The Crown did not object to the Divisional Court looking at the materials (see p. 237G-H) but the court itself refused to do so on the grounds that it would constitute a breach of article 9. In view of the Attorney-General's concession and the decision of this House in Ex parte Brind, in my judgment Reg. v. Secretar....
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....in holding that it is. The "expense incurred in or in connection with" the provision of in-house benefits may be either the marginal cost caused by the provision of the benefit in question or a proportion of the total cost incurred in providing the service both for the public and for the employee ("the average cost"). In favour of the marginal cost argument, it is submitted by the taxpayer that there has to be a causal link between the benefit in kind taxed under section 61(1) and its "cash equivalent :" section 63(1) defines the cash equivalent of the benefit as being an amount equal to the cost of the benefit. Therefore, it is said, one is looking for the actual cost of providing that benefit for the employee. The basic expense of providing and running the school would have been incurred in any event : therefore that expenditure is not caused by the provision of the benefit for the employee. The test is whether the cost would have been incurred but for the provision of the benefit. Therefore, when one comes to section 63(2) one is looking for the additional expense incurred in or in connection with the provision of the benefit. The taxpayers' contention is supported by ....
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....it element) and therefore must in all circumstances be substantial. The 1976 Finance Bill as introduced proposed to charge in-house benefits on a different basis from that applicable to external benefits, i.e., on the open market price charged to the public : clause 54(4). Once the Government announced its intention to withdraw clause 54(4) a number of Members were anxious to elucidate what effect this would have on classes of taxpayers who enjoyed in-house benefits : concessionary transport for railwaymen, airline employees and merchant seamen ; concessionary accommodation for hotel employees ; concessionary education for the children of teachers. In answer to these inquiries the Financial Secretary gave similar answers in relation to each class namely (1) that in all the cases (except that of the teachers' concessionary education) that the benefits would be taxed on the same basis as under the existing law and (2) that in all cases the amount of the charge would be nil, small or, in the case of the schoolteachers,"very small indeed." In my view these repeated assurances are quite inconsistent with the minister having had, or communicated, any intention other than that the ....
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....ear statement by the responsible minister stating the effect of the ambiguous words used in what became section 63 of the Act of 1976 which the Parliamentary history shows to have been the basis on which that section was enacted. 3. If reference to Hansard is permissible, what is the true construction of clause 63 ? In my judgment there can be no doubt that, if Parliamentary privilege does not prohibit references to Hansard, the Parliamentary history shows that Parliament passed the legislation on the basis that the effect of sections 61 and 63 of the Act was to assess in-house benefits, and particularly concessionary education for teachers' children, on the marginal cost to the employer and not on the average cost. Since the words of section 63 are perfectly capable of bearing that meaning, in my judgment that is the meaning they should be given. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech of my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack. In construing the Act without reference to the Parliamentary proceedings, he treats it as decisive that in this case the taxpayers' children were only occupying surplus accommodation and that it lay in the discretion of....
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....he relevant question is "what is the expense incurred in or in connection with providing those facilities." On the literal meaning of the words, the expense to the school of providing those facilities is exactly the same for each boy in the school, i.e., a proportion of the total cost of running the school. Even if it could be said that, because the school would have incurred the basic expense of running the school in any event, such expense was not incurred "in" providing the facilities for the taxpayer's child, on the literal meaning of the words such expense was in any event incurred "in connection with" the provision of such facilities. The words "in connection with" have the widest connotation and I cannot see how they are to be restricted in the absence of some context permitting such restriction. The strongest argument in favour of the taxpayers is the anomaly which would arise if the employer's business were running at a loss or was subsidised by endowment. As I have explained, in such a case the adoption of the literal meaning of the statutory words would lead to a result whereby the taxpayer is assessed at an amount greater than that charged by the employer ....
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.... and give effect to the Parliamentary intention it discloses in deciding the appeal. The problem is the indication given by the Attorney-General that if this House does so, your Lordships may be infringing the privileges of the House of Commons. For the reasons I have given, in my judgment reference to Parliamentary materials for the purpose of construing legislation does not breach article 9 of the Bill of Rights. However, the Attorney-General courteously but firmly warned your Lordships that this did not conclude the question. He said that article 9 was an illustration of the right that the House of Commons had won by 1688 to exclusive cognisance of its own proceedings. He continued : " I remain convinced . . . that the House of Commons would regard a decision by your Lordships to use Hansard to construe a statute as a grave step and that the House of Commons may well regret that its views were not sought on such an important matter before your Lordships reached a decision. " My Lords, this House and the courts have always been, and I trust will always continue to be, zealous in pr....