The HRA 1998, s 6(2)(a) provides that a public authority will not have acted unlawfully if 'as a result of one or more provisions of primary legislation, the authority could not have acted differently'. The reasoning behind this is influenced by the idea of parliamentary sovereignty; if a court has accepted that the legislation cannot be 'interpreted' in a Convention-compliant way, then the public authority was simply acting in accordance with the intention of Parliament and therefore cannot be said to have acted unlawfully.