It may not matter (and I tentatively agree with that) but the actual word under interpretation in the case was “wife”: s38 (2) (b) FA 1938.
In those heady days the cardinal or golden rule applied and the intention of Parliament was to be ascertained from the plain words. Not, even nowadays, its actual intention of course but rather what Laws J described in Thoburn v Sunderland Council as its “imputed, constructive, or presumed” intention; actual intention, he said, is relevant only if the statute is “constitutional” or of “constitutional character”: cited with approval by Colton J in the NI Protocol JR case [2021] NIQB 64 at [91]. Evidence of such actual intention can then apparently be derived from an affidavit of a civil servant who was personally involved in the travaux preparatoires.
We can now have this non-actual intention divined by contextual or purposive construction or “naked usurpation of the legislative function”. And so, apart from Pepper v Hart situations, the determination of actual Parliamentary intention as to most, including fiscal, statutes remains judicially taboo.
Jack Harper