The Statute Law Database is the official revised version of the statute book for the UK in electronic form. 'The statute book' is a term we use to mean all the primary legislation of a public general nature in force at any particular time. SLD is published 'by Authority', which means that it is published with the authority of the Crown. Previously accessible only to a limited number of users in government, SLD was made publicly available online, free of charge, on 20 December 2006.
The originating text of SLD was derived mainly from the publication Statutes in Force (SIF), a 'loose-leaf' style official edition of the revised statute book arranged according to subject matter. SIF was regularly updated with the effects of new legislation made until 1 February 1991. The date of this final revision became the 'basedate' from which SLD has been taken forward. The SIF text in turn derived from a series of earlier official revised editions, principally The Statutes Revised. The main source of the original text of these editions was The Statutes of the Realm, published between 1810 and 1828, which contained the full text of public Acts of Parliament enacted up to 1713.
New legislation made since the basedate has been added, including that of the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. From the basedate onwards, both primary and secondary legislation are held on SLD, though it remains the case at present that only primary legislation is revised.
The other main source of legislation held on SLD is The Northern Ireland Statutes Revised, the official revised version of the primary legislation of Northern Ireland. The content of the numbered volumes and their supplements covering the period from 1921 onwards has been incorporated into SLD as it stood at 31 December 2005. (The content of volumes A to D, which contain pre-1921 Acts of the UK Parliament and its predecessor parliaments extending to Northern Ireland, will be incorporated as soon as possible.) The revision work on the Northern Ireland statutes will now be carried forward on SLD with a separate Northern Ireland basedate of 1 January 2006. For further information on the background to Northern Ireland legislation on SLD, see Background - Northern Ireland.