Pepper (Inspector of Taxes) v Hart [1992] UKHL 3, is a landmark decision of the House of Lords on the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation.

Lord Mackay, dissenting, argued that Hansard should not be considered admissible evidence because of the time and expense involved in a lawyer having to look up every debate and discussion on a particular statute when giving legal advice or preparing a case.

While judges cautiously accepted the judgment, some legal academics argued that it violated rules of evidence, damaged the separation of powers between the executive and Parliament and caused additional expense in cases.

[2] Hart and nine others were teachers at Malvern College, where from 1983 to 1986 they took advantage of a "concessionary fee" scheme, which allowed their children to be educated at rates one-fifth of those paid by other pupils.

[7] It was found, however, that during debate on the Finance Act, ministers had made statements in the House of Commons which supported the idea that such "benefits" should be excluded from tax.

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 obscure or the literal meaning of which leads to an absurdity.

Although he agreed that such a use would not violate Article 9, he argued that it was not appropriate: I believe that practically every question of statutory construction that comes before the courts will involve an argument that the case [could use Hansard].

In the initial hearing, Lords Bridge,[19] Browne-Wilkinson and Oliver were all in favour of dismissing Hart's case, later changing their mind with the new evidence available to them.

[20] Lord Griffiths, on the other hand, was not swayed by the use of Sheldon's statement; he wrote that "I should myself have construed the section in favour of the taxpayer without recourse to Hansard".

[22] Historically, the courts had been more lenient; while this suggestion first appears in the 14th century, with the intention that legislation was best interpreted by those who had written it, the principle was not strongly followed.

In the 1678 case of Ash v Abdy,[nb 1] Lord Nottingham chose to refer to the parliamentary history of the Statute of Frauds, and in Millar v Taylor,[nb 2] in 1769, the first case to explicitly state this principle (as "The sense and meaning of an Act of Parliament must be collected from what it says when passed into law, and not from the history of changes it underwent in the House where it took its rise"),[23] the court chose to depart from it.

A noted attack on the rule was made by Lord Denning in Davis v Johnson,[nb 6] where he said that asserting that the courts could not use Hansard was similar to saying that the judges "should grope about in the dark for the meaning of an Act without switching on the light.

The impact of Pepper was to include Hansard in this list of acceptable material, not only to establish the overall purpose of an act but to define what was meant by a particular provision.

[34] Academics have rejected the idea that legislative history should be an aid to statutory interpretation, arguing, "It would introduce intolerable uncertainty ... if clear language in a detailed provision of [an] Act were to be qualified by unexpressed exceptions derived from a court's view of the object and purpose of the provision", and that it violates the rule of law, which requires that laws be performable.

In the United States, legislation is regularly subject to negotiation and alteration after being introduced to Congress, and so it is in the courts' interest to look at the particular Act's history when interpreting it.

The range of sources accepted is "richer and more diverse", with individual Senators and Representatives and members of the Executive called to give evidence all valid.

[41] There are risks of "excessive detail, over-elaboration, verbosity, prolixity, iteration, tedious repetition", and so a draftsman avoids directly dealing with every single problem, instead following the rule set out by the Renton Committee to ensure that "sufficient certainty is obtained for a fair-minded and reasonable reader to be in no doubt what is intended, it being assumed that no one would take entirely perverse points against the draft, or that such points would be brushed aside by the court".

[47] The decision also raises questions about the separation of powers in the United Kingdom; it has been consistently maintained that it is Parliament, not the executive, which passes legislation.

[49] Lord Mackay's worry that this would increase the cost of litigation was also considered; under Pepper, every lawyer must go through every word said in both Houses of Parliament and in the various committees to ensure that they are giving the best advice to their client.

[51] Baker also argued that ministerial statements should not be used as evidence because they are irrelevant; "no individual member of Parliament is in a position to state what that intention is or to speak for the silent majority.

Departments sponsoring legislation normally prepare briefings for their ministers when talking in Parliament; draftsmen may now be expected to vet these, a time-consuming process.

As a result, these statements and inducements may be structured differently, and MPs may be more concerned that their issues be dealt with "at length and on the record", making parliamentary proceedings "more formal, more cluttered, and more protracted".

Although the lower courts applied the decision and allowed the use of Hansard, and the Lords itself initially followed it in R v Warwickshire County Council, ex parte Johnson,[nb 8] several objections and limits were expressed in later obiter dicta and ratio decidendi.

[57] The first judicial complaints were voiced in 1997 by Lord Hoffmann in The Intolerable Wrestle with Words and Meanings, where he criticised the increased expense and drop in efficiency which it created.

[61] In Robinson v Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Lords Hobhouse, Hoffmann and Millett said that Mackay, with his dissenting judgment, had "turned out to be the better prophet", with large amounts of inefficiency and expense associated with Pepper.

[63] Wilson and others v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry,[nb 12] the first case involving Hansard after the Human Rights Act 1998 put further limits on its use; ministerial statements made in Parliament can not be treated as sources of law, only as supporting evidence.

[67] It is also noted that the most recent generation of House of Lords and Supreme Court judges have been willing to regularly reference legislative history in their arguments.

Lord Carswell noted that Pepper had been "out of judicial favour in recent years", but added that legislative history was "perhaps especially [useful] as a confirmatory aid".