Sir Stephen Charles Laws, KCB, QC, is a British lawyer and Civil Servant who has served since 2006 as the First Parliamentary Counsel.[1]
As head of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, Laws is responsible for the drafting of all the government legislation which is laid before Parliament. Alongside the Treasury Solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Laws is one of the three most senior lawyers in the Civil Service.
Laws undertook his LLB at Bristol University, graduating in 1972, and is thus the first non-Oxbridge graduate to hold the office.[1] After a year lecturing at Bristol, Laws was called to the Bar at Middle Temple, and following pupillage and a brief period practising, he joined the Home Office in 1975 as a legal assistant. He transferred to the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel the next year, and excepting two secondments to the Law Commission, has stayed there since, rising first to Deputy Parliamentary Counsel in 1985, and then Parliamentary Counsel in 1991. He replaced Sir Geoffrey Bowman as First Parliamentary Counsel in 2006.[2]
Laws was appointed the CB in the 1996 New Year Honours.[3]