Legislative Drafting: Artificial Intelligence
The question
To ask the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, representing the House of Commons Commission, whether House of Commons officials have used artificial intelligence to assist with drafting legislation in the past 12 months.
Answered by Nick Smith
Government bills are drafted by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, which is part of the Cabinet Office, and secondary legislation is generally drafted by the relevant government department.
The House of Commons Public Bill Office (PBO) provides support to individual Members in the drafting of private Members’ bills and of amendments to bills. These are specialised tasks and a range of online resources, training and guidance is available to staff in the PBO. This includes access to Microsoft’s Copilot Chat tool, which is available to all parliamentary account holders. No record is kept of whether or when Copilot is used.
Where a draft Private Members Bill (PMB) or amendment is produced for a Member, the Member concerned ultimately takes responsibility for it by presenting or tabling it.
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