Bills are proposals for legislation which, if adopted by Parliament, become Statutes (generally referred to as 'Acts of Parliament' or just 'Acts'). Statutes and Statutory Instruments are statements of the law itself: Statutes are primary or original legislation, while Statutory Instruments ('SIs' or 'Regulations') are secondary or subordinate. It can be helpful to think of Acts as laying out the general principles of legislation, and of SIs as setting out in detail how they will be implemented.
This page summarises what is available online and gives details of selected titles which are available in print in the Brynmor Jones Library.
Bills are a type of Parliamentary paper. A Bill will often appear as a different document at each of its Commons or Lords readings. Every Bill is given a running number through the session, a new sequence starting each session. A Bill is identified in a short form by its title, number and session. For example:
Current bills before Parliament, those from previous sessions (back to 2002-03), and draft bills (prior to being issued formally) can all be found on the Parliament website here. There are also links to further information about a bill's journey through Parliament.
Information about the progress of bills during the current and previous sessions back to 2002-03 can be found here: Progress of Bills. For earlier sessions see the Weekly information bulletin (available back to 1996-97).
For the text of bills published before 2002-03, you will need to use the relevant year's House of Commons or House of Lords papers - see the "Parliamentary papers" page of this Guide.
Indexes to articles
Indexes to cases
Most current, and many historic (back to 1267), Acts of Parliament are available via Legislation.gov.uk although there are some exceptions for pre-1988 acts - for more details, see the FAQs here. You can search for a particular act, or browse by date or by title (within a particular group of years). In addition, for most acts which are still in force, you can view either the original text ("as originally enacted") or the current text incorporating later amendments.
Alternatively, you can use LexisLibrary or Westlaw to find Acts of Parliament (in both cases, off-campus access requires a University/Shibboleth username and password). Both allow you to search for a particular act; in addition, you can browse by either title or year (Westlaw), or by title only (LexisLibrary).
Print versions of Acts from 1950 onwards can be found in Current Law Statutes Annotated (KB 220 C9). Annual volumes are kept up to date by the use of loose leaf binders. This series is the first to print new Acts and is very useful in tracing recent material. Annotations are given for each Act.
For acts before 1866, use one of the following:
However, the above do not include legislation passed during the Interregnum (1642-1660) between Charles I and Charles II, for which you should use:
Statutory Instruments are orders made by ministers under powers granted to them by existing Acts. Each one is numbered consecutively through the year and referred to by number and title, eg SI 2005 no.1751 Football Spectators (Seating) Order.
All statutory instruments from 1987 onwards, and selected ones from 1948 to 1986, are available online via Legislation.gov.uk . You can search for a particular SI, or browse by year or by title (within a particular group of years). Alternatively you can use LexisLibrary or Westlaw - see under Acts of Parliament above for details.
Print versions of most Statutory Instruments from 1949 to 1993 are held in the Brynmor Jones Library.