TC09680 - [2025] UKFTT 01332 (TC)

As Lord Bingham made clear in Quintavalle at [10] the always speaking principle is separate “from statements made in cases where there is said to be an omission in a statute attributable to the oversight or inadvertence of the draftsman.”

In News Corp UK & Ireland Ltd v Revenue and Customs (“News Corp”) [2023] UKSC 7, [2023] STC 446 Lord Hamblen and Burrows (with whom Lords Hodge and Kitchin agreed) described the always speaking principle as follows at [29]:

“What is meant by the always speaking principle is that, as a general rule, a statute should be interpreted taking into account changes that have occurred since the statute was enacted. Those changes may include, for example, technological developments, changes in scientific understanding, changes in social attitudes and changes in the law. Very importantly it does not matter that those changes could not have been reasonably contemplated or foreseen at the time that the provision was enacted.”

They then discussed a series of cases where it had been applied. None of those cases however, concerns reading words into a prescriptive list, adding a category of cases to a definition that is not in that list. Rather, they involve conventionally interpreting words, and phrases.

Applying Lord Wilberforce’s test, the National Assembly of Wales would fall within the “same genus of facts” as the other legislatures that are expressly mentioned in Note 8, and for the reasons I have given above there would be a “clear purpose in the legislation” that would be fulfilled by reading in the National Assembly of Wales. However, I have reached the view that the “strictness” of the words of Note 8, with the definition of “Act” formulated as a prescriptive list, does not allow “an Act or Measure of the National Assembly for Wales” to be read into Note 8.

As such the always speaking principle does not assist HMRC in this case.