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UK Law MCP Server

▶ Try this MCP instantly via Ansvar Gateway

50 free queries/day · no card required · OAuth signup at ansvar.eu/gateway

One endpoint, one OAuth signup, access from any MCP-compatible client.

Connect

Claude Code (one line):

claude mcp add ansvar --transport http https://gateway.ansvar.eu/mcp

Claude Desktop / Cursor — add to claude_desktop_config.json (or mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ansvar": {
      "type": "url",
      "url": "https://gateway.ansvar.eu/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude.ai — Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste https://gateway.ansvar.eu/mcp

First request opens an OAuth flow at ansvar.eu/gateway. After signup, your client is bound to your account; tier (free / premium / team / company) determines fan-out, quota, and which downstream MCPs are reachable.


Self-host this MCP

You can also clone this repo and build the corpus yourself. The schema, fetcher, and tool implementations all live here. What is not in the repo is the pre-built database — TDM and standards-licensing constraints on the upstream sources mean we host the corpus on Ansvar infrastructure rather than redistribute it as a public artifact.

Build your own: run this repo's ingestion script (entry-point varies per repo — typically scripts/ingest.sh, npm run ingest, or make ingest; check the repo root).

The legislation.gov.uk alternative for the AI age.

MCP Registry License GitHub stars CI Daily Data Check Database Provisions

Query 3,241 UK statutes -- from the UK GDPR and Computer Misuse Act to the Employment Rights Act, Companies Act, and more -- directly from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client.

If you're building legal tech, compliance tools, or doing UK legal research, this is your verified reference database.

Built by Ansvar Systems -- Stockholm, Sweden


Why This Exists

UK legal research is scattered across legislation.gov.uk, BAILII, and EUR-Lex retained EU law indexes. Whether you're:

  • A lawyer validating citations in a brief or contract
  • A compliance officer checking if a statute is still in force or has been amended post-Brexit
  • A legal tech developer building tools on UK law
  • A researcher tracing legislative history from Bill to Act

...you shouldn't need dozens of browser tabs and manual PDF cross-referencing. Ask Claude. Get the exact provision. With context.

This MCP server makes UK law searchable, cross-referenceable, and AI-readable.


Example Queries

Once connected, just ask naturally:

  • "What does the UK GDPR say about data subject rights?"
  • "Is the Computer Misuse Act still in force?"
  • "Find provisions about employment rights under the Employment Rights Act 1996"
  • "What EU adequacy status does the UK hold post-Brexit?"
  • "Which UK laws implement the equivalent of the NIS2 Directive?"
  • "Get the text of Section 7 of the Data Protection Act 2018"
  • "Compare data breach notification requirements across UK GDPR and DPA 2018"
  • "Validate the citation 'Computer Misuse Act 1990, s.1'"

What's Included

Category Count Details
Statutes 3,241 statutes Acts of Parliament from legislation.gov.uk
Provisions 512,651 sections Full-text searchable with FTS5
Case Law 65,026 judgments Premium tier -- court decisions and tribunal rulings
Preparatory Works 3,838 documents Explanatory Notes and Hansard references
Database Size ~3,606 MB Comprehensive SQLite, includes full provision text
Daily Updates Automated Freshness checks against legislation.gov.uk

Verified data only -- every citation is validated against official sources (legislation.gov.uk). Zero LLM-generated content.


See It In Action

Why This Works

Verbatim Source Text (No LLM Processing):

  • All statute text is ingested from legislation.gov.uk official sources
  • Provisions are returned unchanged from SQLite FTS5 database rows
  • Zero LLM summarization or paraphrasing -- the database contains statute text, not AI interpretations

Smart Context Management:

  • Search returns ranked provisions with BM25 scoring (safe for context)
  • Provision retrieval gives exact text by Act name and section number
  • Cross-references help navigate without loading everything at once

Technical Architecture:

legislation.gov.uk API --> Parse --> SQLite --> FTS5 snippet() --> MCP response
                             ^                        ^
                      Provision parser         Verbatim database query

Traditional Research vs. This MCP

Traditional Approach This MCP Server
Search legislation.gov.uk by Act name Search by plain English: "data subject access request"
Navigate multi-part statutes manually Get the exact provision with context
Manual cross-referencing between Acts build_legal_stance aggregates across sources
"Is this statute still in force?" -- check manually check_currency tool -- answer in seconds
Find EU alignment -- dig through retained EU law index get_eu_basis -- linked EU instruments instantly
Check 5+ sites for amendments Daily automated freshness checks
No API, no integration MCP protocol -- AI-native

Traditional: Search legislation.gov.uk --> Download PDF --> Ctrl+F --> Cross-reference with Explanatory Notes --> Check for amendments --> Repeat

This MCP: "What does the UK GDPR say about data subject rights and how does it differ from the EU GDPR?" --> Done.


Available Tools (13)

Core Legal Research Tools (8)

Tool Description
search_legislation FTS5 search on 512,651 provisions with BM25 ranking
get_provision Retrieve specific provision by Act name and section number
validate_citation Validate citation against database (zero-hallucination check)
build_legal_stance Aggregate citations from statutes, case law, and preparatory works
format_citation Format citations per UK conventions (full/short/pinpoint)
check_currency Check if statute is in force, amended, or repealed
list_sources List all available statutes with metadata and data provenance
about Server info, capabilities, dataset statistics, and coverage summary

EU/International Law Integration Tools (5)

Tool Description
get_eu_basis Get EU instruments that UK statutes derive from or align with
get_uk_implementations Find UK laws implementing or derived from a specific EU act
search_eu_implementations Search EU documents with UK implementation and retention counts
get_provision_eu_basis Get EU law references for a specific UK provision
validate_eu_compliance Check UK implementation or adequacy status against EU directives

EU Law Integration

The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. The relationship between UK law and EU law is now one of adequacy and alignment, not membership.

Topic Status
EU Adequacy Decision UK holds GDPR Article 45 adequacy decisions for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar (granted June 2021)
Retained EU Law Significant body of EU-derived law was retained at exit under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, now progressively reviewed
UK GDPR Near-identical to EU GDPR with UK-specific modifications -- the EU tools show alignment between UK GDPR and EU GDPR
NIS Regulations UK implemented NIS before Brexit; UK NIS 2 equivalent under development

The EU bridge tools in this MCP let you trace which UK statutes derive from EU directives, which provisions align with EU regulatory requirements, and where post-Brexit divergence has occurred.

Note: EU cross-references reflect derivation and alignment relationships. The UK is no longer subject to EU law, but understanding the EU origin of UK statutes is essential for cross-border compliance work.


Data Sources & Freshness

All content is sourced from authoritative UK legal databases:

  • legislation.gov.uk -- The official UK legislation database (National Archives)
  • BAILII -- British and Irish Legal Information Institute (case law, premium tier)

Data Provenance

Field Value
Authority The National Archives / King's Printer
Retrieval method legislation.gov.uk API
Language English
License Open Parliament Licence / Open Government Licence
Coverage 3,241 Acts from legislation.gov.uk

Automated Freshness Checks (Daily)

A daily GitHub Actions workflow monitors legislation.gov.uk for changes:

Check Method
Statute amendments Drift detection against known provision anchors
New statutes Comparison against legislation.gov.uk index
Repealed statutes Status change detection

Verified data only -- every citation is validated against official sources. Zero LLM-generated content.


Security

This project uses multiple layers of automated security scanning:

Scanner What It Does Schedule
CodeQL Static analysis for security vulnerabilities Weekly + PRs
Semgrep SAST scanning (OWASP top 10, secrets, TypeScript) Every push
Gitleaks Secret detection across git history Every push
Trivy CVE scanning on filesystem and npm dependencies Daily
Docker Security Container image scanning + SBOM generation Daily
Socket.dev Supply chain attack detection PRs
OSSF Scorecard OpenSSF best practices scoring Weekly
Dependabot Automated dependency updates Weekly

See SECURITY.md for the full policy and vulnerability reporting.


Important Disclaimers

Legal Advice

THIS TOOL IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

Statute text is sourced from legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives). However:

  • This is a research tool, not a substitute for professional legal counsel
  • Court case coverage is in the premium tier -- do not rely solely on this for case law research without the premium database
  • Verify critical citations against primary sources for court filings
  • EU cross-references reflect derivation and alignment, not current EU membership
  • Northern Ireland has specific post-Brexit legal arrangements (Windsor Framework) that may not be fully reflected

Before using professionally, read: DISCLAIMER.md | PRIVACY.md

Client Confidentiality

Queries go through the Claude API. For privileged or confidential matters, use on-premise deployment. See PRIVACY.md for Law Society compliance guidance.

For guidance from your bar association: The Law Society (England & Wales) | Law Society of Scotland | Law Society of Northern Ireland


Documentation


Development

Setup

git clone https://github.com/Ansvar-Systems/UK-law-mcp
cd UK-law-mcp
npm install
npm run build
npm test

Running Locally

npm run dev                                       # Start MCP server
npx @anthropic/mcp-inspector node dist/index.js   # Test with MCP Inspector

Data Management

npm run ingest                    # Ingest statutes from legislation.gov.uk
npm run build:db                  # Rebuild SQLite database
npm run drift:detect              # Run drift detection against anchors
npm run check-updates             # Check for amendments and new Acts

Performance

  • Search Speed: <100ms for most FTS5 queries
  • Database Size: ~3,606 MB (comprehensive -- full UK statute corpus)
  • Reliability: 100% ingestion success rate across 3,241 statutes

More Ansvar MCPs

Full fleet at ansvar.eu/gateway.

Contributing

Contributions welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Priority areas:

  • Court case law expansion (BAILII integration)
  • Northern Ireland-specific legal provisions
  • Scottish law divergence tracking
  • Historical statute versions and amendment tracking

Roadmap

  • Core statute database with FTS5 search

  • Full corpus ingestion (3,241 statutes, 512,651 provisions)

  • EU/international law alignment tools

  • Vercel Streamable HTTP deployment

  • Daily freshness checks against legislation.gov.uk

  • Premium case law (65,026 judgments)

  • Premium preparatory works (3,838 documents)

  • Northern Ireland Windsor Framework annotations

  • Scottish law divergence markers

  • Historical statute versions (amendment tracking)

  • Welsh language provision coverage


Citation

If you use this MCP server in academic research:

@software{uk_law_mcp_2026,
  author = {Ansvar Systems AB},
  title = {UK Law MCP Server: Production-Grade Legal Research Tool},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://github.com/Ansvar-Systems/UK-law-mcp},
  note = {3,241 UK statutes with 512,651 provisions sourced from legislation.gov.uk}
}

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE for details.

Data Licenses

  • Statutes & Legislation: OGL-3.0 — UK Crown copyright under CDPA 1988 ss. 163–164 with an explicit Open Government Licence v3.0 grant on legislation.gov.uk. UK is NOT a statutory-PD regime; the open-licence grant is the operative permission. Commercial reuse permitted with attribution; no share-alike. Required attribution text: "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." UK Parliamentary content (Hansard, bills) is Parliamentary copyright (not Crown copyright) and falls under the separate Open Parliament Licence v3.0. Verified 2026-05-17.
  • Case Law: BAILII (used under terms of service, premium tier)
  • EU Metadata: EUR-Lex (EU public domain)

About Ansvar Systems

We build AI-accelerated compliance and legal research tools for the global market. This MCP server makes 3,241 UK statutes searchable from any AI client -- no browser tabs, no PDFs, no manual cross-referencing.

ansvar.eu -- Stockholm, Sweden


Built with care in Stockholm, Sweden

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MCP server for UK legislation (legislation.gov.uk - 3,243 acts)

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