“The power to make statutory recommendations is discretionary for the tribunal, but it must be exercised, like all a tribunal’s discretions, judicially. And once begun, it must be followed through fairly. It is obviously designed to assist in identifying the best way forward for the patient. But it operates by moral pressure and moral authority, not by order. The tribunal must be mindful of that limitation when deciding whether to make a recommendation in the first place. If it does so, it must carry the process through judicially, although the exercise of its powers will be tempered by the reality that it has no power to coerce.”
“8….The tribunal has no power to make an order, but it is able to use its power to recommend when it considers that the conditions are satisfied at the time of the hearing, perhaps because the tribunal is aware of local facilities that the responsible clinician is not. But the power is not so limited. It can also be used to trigger consideration of the steps that could be taken to move the patient towards eventual release on an order. This was not a case in which the evidence showed that a community treatment order would never become a realistic option in the foreseeable future. In those circumstances, I cannot say that the tribunal would not have been persuaded to make a recommendation. 9. … But a recommendation is not limited to the present, as I have said. The power can be used as a trigger for action in the future. The tribunal’s reasons do not allow for the possibility.”
“Statutory interpretation is an exercise which requires the court to identify the meaning borne by the words in question in the particular context.” (R v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, Ex p Spath Holme Ltd[2001] AC 349 , 396). Words and passages in a statute derive their meaning from their context. A phrase or passage must be read in the context of the section as a whole and in the wider context of a relevant group of sections. …”
"The courts will not interpret a statute so as to produce an absurd result, unless clearly constrained to do so by the words Parliament has used: see R v McCool[2018] 1 WLR 2431 , paras 23-25 (Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore JSC), citing a passage in Bennion on Statutory Interpretation, 6th ed (2013), p 1753. See now Bennion, Bailey and Norbury on Statutory Interpretation, 8th ed (2020), section 13.1(1): 'The court seeks to avoid a construction that produces an absurd result, since this is unlikely to have been intended by the legislature'. As the authors of Bennion, Bailey and Norbury say, the courts give a wide meaning to absurdity in this context, 'using it to include virtually any result which is impossible, unworkable or impracticable, inconvenient, anomalous or illogical, futile or pointless, artificial, or productive of a disproportionate counter-mischief'. The width of the concept is acceptable, since the presumption against absurdity does not apply mechanistically but rather, as they point out in section 13.1(2), '[t]he strength of the presumption ... depends on the degree to which a particular construction produces an unreasonable result...'"