Cases involving an interpretation under section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998
This is a collection of cases in which section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 was used to interpret legislation.
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Details
This list of cases was compiled during policy work, in 2022 and 2023, on the Bill of Rights Bill. The work sought to identify as complete a list as possible of cases where an interpretation under section 3 of the Human Rights Act had been used to render the legislation compatible with Convention rights. Section 3 requires that legislation is, as far as is possible, read and given effect to in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights.
For some cases in this list, section 3 is utilised or mentioned in combination with other methods of achieving compatibility for example, common law interpretation or, for secondary legislation, the use of section 6 of the Human Rights Act.
This case list was produced by officials as part of previous policy development and will not be exhaustive of all section 3 cases. It is being shared for reasons of transparency. The Ministry of Justice does not intend to update this document.