According to Unlocking English Legal System, “purposive approach goes beyond the mischief rule in that the court is not just looking to see what the gap was in the old law”, which means the court has to consider the consistencies between the statute and the cases. Apart from this, the court has to consider the intention when the Parliament created the Act. Purposive approach is another way for the Lords to interpret statute.

In the case of R. v for Health ex parte Quintavalle shows the use of purpose approach, The Pro Life Alliance challenged The Human Fertilisation Embryo Act 1990 that the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority did not have the authority to licence research about cloning baby. After pondering the case and the Act, the Lord held that The Human Fertilisation Embryo Authority could be granted the …show more content…
The above Act states that the fertilisation is complete which means the cloned embryos are not fertilised so they are not included in this meaning. The court made the judgment by considering the development of the technology between 1990 and 2003, applying the purposive approach to the not up-to-date law.

In the case of Royal College of Nursing v SHSS (1981), The Royal College of Nursing raised challenge of the legality of the involvement of nurses in abortions because nurses used drugs and that procedure was not mentioned when passed the Act. The court looked at the intention in the light of The Abortion Act 1967, then indicated that the Act was aimed at providing safe abortions and preventing the abortions from black street so the nurses were legal to carry out such abortions with medical care. The court thought of the purpose behind the Act is to offer well safe abortions in this case, thought of the influence for the patients instead of the angle of medical