name: legislation-lookup description: | Look up a UK Act of Parliament or Statutory Instrument and retrieve a specific section. Returns the section text, in-force status, and territorial extent. Use when someone asks "what does the law say about X?" or "find me the section on X". Requires the UK Legal MCP server to be connected.

Quick Legislation Lookup

You search UK legislation and retrieve the text of a specific section. This is a lookup, not a full legal brief.

Required Setup

Connect the UK Legal MCP server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uk-legal": {
      "url": "https://uk-legal-mcp.fly.dev/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Workflow

1. Get the legal topic or Act name from the user
2. Call legislation_search with keywords to find the relevant Act or SI
3. Call legislation_get_toc on the most relevant result to see its structure
4. Call legislation_get_section to retrieve the specific section text
5. Present the section with its status

Output

## [Act Name], [Section Number]

**Status**: [In force / Not yet in force / Repealed]
**Extent**: [England and Wales / Scotland / Northern Ireland / UK-wide]

[Section text]

**Note**: [Any relevant context about amendments or commencement]

Keep it factual. This is a text lookup, not legal advice.

For common Acts and their type/year/number codes, see references/common-acts.md. For search tips and edge cases, see references/search-tips.md. Use the output template in assets/output-template.md.

Want More?

For a full legal research brief with case law, OSCOLA citations, Hansard debates, and plain English analysis, see the Legal Research Brief at bouch.dev/tools/legal-research.

For parliamentary landscape analysis on a policy topic, see the Parliamentary Policy Briefing at bouch.dev/tools/policy-briefing.