Get Legislation Section
legislation_get_sectionRetrieve a specific section of a UK Act or Statutory Instrument, returning its full text, territorial extent, in-force status, and prospective flag.
Instructions
Retrieve a specific section of a UK Act or Statutory Instrument.
Returns the full section text, territorial extent, in-force status, and prospective flag. Content is capped per max_chars (default 10,000, ~2,500 tokens) — raise max_chars for unusually long definition sections. Check content_truncated in the response to see if it was cut.
IMPORTANT: Always check extent — a section may apply to England &
Wales but not Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Alternative: read the resource template
legislation://{type}/{year}/{number}/section/{section} to get raw
CLML XML directly. Use this tool when you want the parsed structured
response (extent, in-force, version_date) instead of raw XML.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| params | Yes | type, year, number, section identifier, optional max_chars. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| title | Yes | Section title or heading | |
| section_number | Yes | Section number, e.g. '47', '12A', 'Schedule 2' | |
| content | Yes | Plain text content of the section, possibly truncated per max_chars. Check content_truncated and original_length for full-text information. | |
| content_truncated | No | True if content was cut to fit max_chars | |
| original_length | No | Original plain-text length in characters before any truncation | |
| in_force | No | Whether this section is currently in force; None if unknown | |
| extent | No | Territorial extent: list of 'England', 'Wales', 'Scotland', 'Northern Ireland' | |
| version_date | No | Date of the version retrieved | |
| prospective | No | True if this section has not yet come into force |