106.As noted above the legislation.gov.uk website publishes legislation in ‘revised form’. This means that amendments made to legislation by subsequent legislation are shown as incorporated into the text. In other words, the legislation is published in up-to-date form.
107.A limited amount of legislation in revised form was first made available online to the public in December 2006 on the UK Statute Law Database. In July 2010, the legislation.gov.uk website was launched, incorporating both the revised legislation content from the Statute Law Database and the ‘as enacted’ legislation from the website of the Office of Public Sector Information (known as OPSI). Several sources were used to build the revised legislation records and for a number of years efforts were concentrated on incorporating amendments to primary legislation, so that Acts of the four UK legislatures in revised form are made available. More recently work has been underway to also make statutory instruments available in revised form. As well as reflecting new amendments to statutory instruments on the legislation.gov.uk website, a similar backlog of amendments previously made is also being worked through.
108.Section 37V requires the King’s Printer for Wales to publish, online, Welsh legislation as it has been amended by any other enactment. In practice, this will be the revised form of Acts of the Senedd, Assembly Measures and Welsh statutory instruments, made available on the legislation.gov.uk website. This is to be done “so far as practicable” from the time an amendment comes into force. The extent to which this is practicable will depend on a number of factors, including the time between the legislation effecting the change being enacted or made and it coming into force, the (overall) amount of legislation that is published during that period, the complexity of the provisions and the extent to which older amendments also need to be reflected in order for an enactment to be up-to-date.
Commentary on Sections Part 2 – Publication Etc. of Welsh Legislation Section 37V – Publication of Welsh legislation as amended