Wikidata:WikiProject British Politicians/legislation

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This is some notes on the data model for legislation (Acts, SIs, etc).

Data model - Acts and Sis

Each Act or SI should have an individual item. Note that Wikipedia articles sometimes combine a series together, treat the repealing act along with the main act, etc.

• Label - use the short title. Welsh Acts and SIs should have a Welsh language label
• Description - this varies a bit but the most common is some form of "[year] United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland [citation]" for old-style citations with a regnal year, or "United Kingdom Act of Parliament [citation]" for new-style ones with a calendar year. Welsh Acts and SIs should have a Welsh language description

• instance of (P31) - use a specific class if possible rather than Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q4677783), such as:
  • Public General Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q105774620)
  • Private Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q6664265)
  • Local Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q100165600)
  • Personal Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q110273355)) .

• Devolved governments
  • Act of the Scottish Parliament (Q18009506)
  • Act of Senedd Cymru (Q4676706)
  • Act of the Northern Ireland Assembly (Q100271152)
  • Act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland (Q100324105) (1921–1972)

• Statutory Instruments, Rules &c. Welsh SIs have two P31 statements: UK Statutory Instrument (Q7604686) and Welsh Statutory Instrument (Q100754500) e.g. Q99831926#P31
  • UK Statutory Instrument (Q7604686)
  • Welsh Statutory Instrument (Q100754500)
  • Scottish statutory instrument (Q7437991)
  • statutory rules of Northern Ireland (Q7604693)
  • Statutory Rules and Orders (Q7604692)
  • Measure of the National Assembly for Wales (Q6804197)

• Pre-UK parliament Acts - probably need public/private/local subclasses ... might exist, have not checked
  • Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (Q18009431)
  • Act of the Parliament of Scotland (Q18009569)
  • Act of the Parliament of England (Q18009587)
  • Act of the Parliament of Ireland (Q18009650)

• publication date (P577) - publication year (year precision is fine)
• date of promulgation (P7589) - date of royal assent (can be found from Parliament linked-data or from the Act itself)
• legal citation of this text (P1031) - the standardised citation - officially this should use the form "9 Edw. VII c. 9" before 1961, "1975 c. 4" for 1961 onwards.
• country (P17) - United Kingdom (Q145) or United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193) depending on date.
• applies to jurisdiction (P1001) - this could be UK, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England and Wales (should this be England and Wales (Q1156248) or two statements?), etc etc as appropriate. Legislation pertaining to a subnational entity - e.g. The Bury (Electoral Changes) Order 2022 (Q112997610) - can take the area as jurisdiction
• short name (P1813) - the formal short title. Welsh Acts should have a Welsh language short title statement.
• official name (P1448) - the formal long title (if it fits...). Welsh Acts and SIs should have a Welsh language official name statement.

optionally, if the series is set up

• part of the series (P179) - 41 Geo 3 (Q105777562) etc, with qualifiers series ordinal (P1545) for chapter number, follows (P155) and followed by (P156) for Acts in chapter order, SIs in numeric order. Welsh SIs are members of the UK SI series and the Welsh SI series - e.g.Q99831926#P179.

if relevant

• repealed by (P2568) / repeals (P3148)
• amended by (P2567) / [no current 'amends' property]
• foundational text (P457) - notably for SIs: the Act under which they are predicated
• signatory (P1891) - notably for SIs - the minister or civil servant who signed the SI.

if available

• UK Parliament ID (P6213) - if on the Parliamentary linked-data service (should be available for all public Acts since 1801)
• legislation.gov.uk ID (P3343) - if available in any form on legislation.gov.uk (usually only if still in force) - use the simplest ukpga/1985/67 type form and not /contents or /enacted per guidance at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/developer/uris
• full work available at URL (P953) - if available on legislation.gov.uk, use that, otherwise any digital copy will work. Welsh Acts and Sis should have links to a Welsh language version of the text. Qualifiers: language of work or name (P407) & copyright license (P275)

• document file on Wikimedia Commons (P996) - ideally textx if SIs and Acts will be loaded on Commons

to be worked out

• legislated by (P467) - decide if this should be Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q11010) or the the Parliament responsible, eg 58th Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q77685395)
• legal citation of this text (P1031) - old style vs new style, which is preferred? New style for old acts can have some collisions when two sessions have the same chapter in one calendar year, but one citation form recommends keeping regnal years in brackets after the new style in these cases. Welsh Acts and SIs should have a Welsh language legal citation as well as an English language citation.
• main subject (P921) - any guidelines here?

To do

• Align with Parliamentary linked-data IDs then crossreference dates and citations
• Standardise citations (abbreviations of monarch, punctuation, spacing, etc)
• Standardise country (P17) and legislated by (P467), then apply
• Figure out how to handle groups of legislation like Factory Acts (Q1390816)
  • 'Factories Acts' are IMO a colloquial series of acts, and we might do worse than to make the lead item a P31=series (Q3511132), perhaps with an object has role (P3831) qualifier taking the value 'colloquial series' (or somesuch); and member acts having part of the series (P179)
  • Provisionally using instance of (P31):series of Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom (Q117536249) for these to keep them all in one place, but can go back and update later
    • That works well - Q16848592#P527, Q106303401#P179 --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:43, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
• Sweep for any items marked as Acts that are in fact Bills which never proceeded
• Set all Acts to use a more specific instance of (P31)
• Various acts use P31 to indicate theme/scope (eg "environmental law" or "amendment") - should this be somewhere else?
• Suspect there's more to do on dates, such as 'date coming in to force' or 'date repealed' ... date of promulgation (P7589), inception (P571), dissolved, abolished or demolished date (P576)?
• Standardise series labels, add standard set of aliases (i.e. 10 & 11 Vic (Q105777693) -> 10 & 11 Vict. )

Reports

• All currently entered Acts

• Numbers of Acts per year

• Parliament linked-data report for Public Acts

• Non-redirect items on enwiki which seem to be an Act but are not marked on WD as such
• Counts of properties used on UK Acts
• Counts of properties used on UK SIs
• Main subject & foundational text report