A. AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT 65 B. The Court’s assessment 1. The scope of the case before the Court 153. The Court must start by determining the applicants’ first preliminary objection, according to which the Government should be precluded from raising a defence to the complaints under Article 5 § 1 based on the exception in sub-paragraph 5 § 1 (f), on the ground that they did not pursue it before the domestic courts. 154. The Court is intended to be subsidiary to the national systems safeguarding human rights. It is, therefore, appropriate that the national courts should initially have the opportunity to determine questions of the compatibility of domestic law with the Convention and that, if an application is nonetheless subsequently brought before the Court, it should have the benefit of the views of the national courts, as being in direct and continuous contact with the forces of their countries (see Burden v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 13378/05, § 42, ECHR 2008). It is thus of importance that the arguments put by the Government before the national courts should be on the same lines as those put before this Court. In particular, it is not open to a Government to put to the Court arguments which are inconsistent with the position they adopted before the national courts (see, mutatis mutandis, Pine Valley Developments Ltd and Others v. Ireland, 29 November 1991, § 47, Series A no. 222, and Kolompar v. Belgium, 24 September 1992, §§ 31-32, Series A no. 235-C). 155. The Court does not, however, consider that the Government are estopped from seeking to rely on sub-paragraph (f) of Article 5 § 1 to justify the detention. It is clear that the Government expressly kept open, in the text of the derogation and during the derogation proceedings before the domestic courts, the question of the application of Article 5. Moreover, the majority of the House of Lords either explicitly or impliedly considered whether the detention was compatible with Article 5 § 1 before assessing the validity of the derogation (see paragraph 17 above). 156. The applicants further contended that the Government should not be permitted to dispute before the Court the House of Lords’ finding that the derogation was invalid. 157. The present situation is, undoubtedly, unusual in that Governments do not normally resort to challenging, nor see any need to contest, decisions of their own highest courts before this Court. There is not, however, any prohibition on a Government making such a challenge, particularly if they consider that the national Supreme Court’s ruling is problematic under the Convention and that further guidance is required from the Court. 158. In the present case, because a declaration of incompatibility under the Human Rights Act 1998 is not binding on the parties to the domestic litigation (see paragraph 94 above), the applicants’ success in the House of