Law Weblog

UK Statute Law now freely available

Wednesday 20 December 2006 at 11:15 pm | In News | Post Comment

For the first time an official, authoritative online database of revised UK primary legislation is available free of charge to the public, the Department for Constitutional Affairs announced today.

The Statute Law Database can be found at www.statutelaw.gov.uk.

Baroness Cathy Ashton said:
“Citizens should have access to the laws of the land by which they are governed. The Statute Law Database provides an authoritative and easy-to-use historical database of UK statute law. I hope it will be welcomed as a useful tool for professionals who need to keep up with changes to the law as well as those who simply have an interest in historic and current legislation.” The database offers users a range of advanced search and navigation functions across over 30,000 items of UK primary and secondary legislation. The database contains primary legislation that was in force at 1 February 1991 and primary and secondary legislation that has been produced since that date.”

An amazing resource but the database must be treated with respect; for example the Industrial Tribunals Act 1996 was renamed the Employment Tribunals Act but finding which act made the amendment takes skill. Similarly, tracking down which articles were added to the police power of stop and search leads to “any article to which subsection (8A) below applies” which is not terribly helpful further research is only for the brave. In the same section it is also easy to miss is “(e) offences under section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 (destroying or damaging property)”. The amendments to burglary have not yet been made and so they have missed out: “In section 9 of the Theft Act 1968 (burglary), in subsection (2) omit “or raping any person” (removed by the Sexual Offences Act 2003). So, beware you have been warned.
For students a good text book does it for you and you are not likely to need this otherwise wonderful resource.