Government publishes all UK legislation online

The organisation said that its new website contains 6.5m PDF documents from Magna Carta, which established basic liberties in England, to the latest statutory instruments. Believed to be the first of its kind in the world, Legislation.gov.uk shows the original versions of all legislation covering both the UK and its constituent nations, such as all the laws passed by the Scottish Parliament. It also details any amendments, showing how laws have evolved. Acting chief executive of the National Archives Oliver Morley described the launch of the site as "a bold statement of transparency". "By using the latest technology and opening up the raw data underpinning Legislation.gov.uk, the National Archives has given global access to the nation's operating system. I'm proud to say this website is the only example of its kind in the world. It provides access to an invaluable and historical resource for anyone wanting to know what the law actually says," Morley said. The archives believes that the site "takes forward" deputy prime minister Nick Clegg's recent call for wider democratic involvement in the legislative process. The new website follows the launch of a number of other government sites aimed at engaging the public including Spending Challenge and Your Freedom. The Data.gov.uk team posted a blog on 29 July 2010 saying that they predict the new legislation site will be enthusiastically used by bloggers. "We envisage bloggers using the Application Programming Interface (API) to pull through most recent versions of parts of statutes. Perhaps we may see the development of specialist legislation aware plug-ins using tools like Wordpress, that automatically mark-up and link legislative references in other documents," the blog said. "Perhaps someone will mash up current legislation with proposed changes in bills. Just being able to point at a specific part of a particular statute is very useful."