---

Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Approved Premises) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

I apologise. Mr O’Neill says that since Section 3 of the Human Rights Act requires statutes to be interpreted as much as possible in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights, that section might, arguably, give rise to the possibility that it could be construed away or read down. However Mr O’Neill, who I do not criticise at all, is an honourable man. He rightly sets out the basic law in relation to reading down under Section 3. He says that the only limitation on Section 3 of the Human Rights Act, on interpretive obligation, according to the House of Lords decision in Ghaidan, is that in reading words into the legislation, or in deleting offending words, the courts have to satisfied that such emendation could not be said to ““go against the grain”” by overriding some cardinal feature of the legislation in question, or otherwise raise generally policy issues that a court cannot properly to seek to resolve by a process of judicial rewriting. That is what Mr O’Neill, the person relied upon by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, said. I also quote the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, from a leading case on this subject: "““But, with the addition of the Convention as background, the question is still one of interpretation, i.e. the ascertainment of what, taking into account the presumption created by section 3, Parliament would reasonably be understood to have meant by using the actual language of the statute””." I do not overstate my opinion when I say this about the suggestion that the provision inserted by my noble friend Lord Alli can be interpreted in any way other than as saying that there is no obligation: the argument that it could be read down under Section 3 of the Human Rights Act is hopeless.