Lessons from Ramsay on statutory interpretation

It is well established that the Ramsay principal is no more and no less than an approach to statutory construction. Several consequences flow from this. It is the statute that one is interpreting and it is in the statute alone that one must look for the purpose of the provision that one is interpreting. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach; it is in the statute that one must look to determine the scope of the factual enquiry prescribed by the statutory test. It is important not to elide different stages of the process of statutory construction. The fact that the statutory test prescribes an investigation into a series of transactions does not mean that that series of transactions is incapable of meeting the statutory test.