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Official Papers for Refugee Studies: Legislation

Online sources of legislation

Please see below a list of the more common online sources of UK Legislation.  It is important to know if you are looking for amended or unamended legislation.There are a number of subscription databases that have amended legislation and they also include other information (such as annotations) which may be useful.

New Legislation

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UK legislation

House of Parliament reproduced with permission from the UK ParliamentPrimary legislation (Statutes or Acts) are passed by Parliament.  These pieces of legislation (called Bills) are discussed in both Houses and amendments added and approved by both Houses before the Bill received “Royal Ascent” and becomes an Act. See separate tab on Parliament for more detailed information.

Secondary or delegated legislation (statutory instruments) is also produced, usually by specific government departments, but these do not usually need to go through the process of parliament.  When looking for Legislation it is important to distinguish between unamended legislation and amended legislation.  If you are looking for the current law you must always make sure that you look in a source that includes amendments.

Legislation is covered by many of the legal databases - see the box on the left for further details of which database contain amended and unamended legislation.

Legislation in print in the Bodleian Law Library

Cw UK 10 on Level 1, one floor beneath the entrance level. This is a collection of statutes as originally published. On the same level you will find separate collections of the acts of the devolved legislatures.

On Level 2, in KZ section, you will find the print services which try to keep practitioners up to date with amendments, repeals etc via various updating services. A key one is Halsbury's Statutes. Holders of an Oxford SSO can use the online version of this service via Lexis+UK .