Adding and updating Origin information

To be able to generate the content of the Tables of Origins and Destinations automatically, you will need to complete some additional steps while drafting your consolidation bill. These steps include:

• Populating and tagging the Table of Abbreviations in the Table of Origins attachment

• Adding Origin notes to provisions of the bill, using the abbreviations you’ve recorded in the Table of Abbreviations

• Tagging the references to enactments which you’ve included in each of your Origin notes.

Recording abbreviations in the Origins attachment

When you create a new working version in a consolidation bill project, the empty working version always includes a placeholder Table of Origins attachment with a Table of Abbreviations at the start. The Table of Abbreviations consists of two tables, one for Primary and one for Secondary legislation:

As you draft your bill and make note of which existing enactments are being consolidated by each provision of the bill, you should add entries to these tables for each of the abbreviations you intend to use to refer to those enactments in the Origin notes.

By adding abbreviations to the abbreviation tables and using Lawmaker’s ‘Tag references’ feature to identify existing law on legislation.gov.uk, you will build up the background data which subsequently enables Lawmaker to generate and re-generate the Tables of Origins and Destinations.

To add and tag an abbreviation:

1. Click within the Text placeholder in the first column and type the short-form of the reference (you do not need to include quotation marks around the abbreviation):

   

2. Click within the Text placeholder in the second column and type out the full name of the Act, Measure, or S.I., ensuring that it exactly matches the title as it appears on legislation.gov.uk.

3. Press alt+t, or click the Tag references button in the toolbar and wait for the tagging process to finish. When it does, the abbreviation should appear in purple, surrounded by quotation marks, and the referenced enactment should appear in blue:

   

4. To add a new abbreviation, right-click on the table row, and from the Table… sub-menu select ‘Add new row below’ or ‘Add new row above’, then repeat steps 1-3 to add the abbreviation text and tag the reference.

   

How to insert/update Origin notes

To record information about the origins of provisions in the bill, you should add Origin notes against sections, subsections, paragraphs, and Schedule paragraphs. To add an Origin note, place the cursor in the provision that you would like to record origin information for and perform any of the following actions:

• open the Insert menu from the upper toolbar and select Insert Origin Note

• press Alt+Shift+o on your keyboard

• right-click on the text of the provision and select Insert Origin Note from the right-click menu.

  

An empty Origin note will appear at the end of the selected provision:

Click the green (origin) label to show or hide individual origin notes.

Type the origin information into the Text placeholder. Use the abbreviated forms of references to the existing legislation which you have recorded in the Table of Abbreviations. See Short-form references in Origin notes for more information on the expected format of references inside Origin notes.

You do not need to add the word ‘Origin’ at the beginning of the note - this will be added automatically when generating a PDF which includes Origin information.

Tag the references in the note in order to add links to the existing law on legislation.gov.uk and retrieve the data necessary for auto-generation of the Table of Destinations at a later stage.

To tag the Origin notes in a particular section, place your cursor within the text of the note (or anywhere within that provision), then press alt+t, or click the Tag references button in the toolbar and wait for the tagging process to finish:

The tagged note will appear in blue.

You can then use the floating references toolbar to remove tagging from the reference, or jump straight to legislation.gov.uk by clicking ‘Go to ref’.

To enable the tagging operation to work correctly, you must reference specific provisions in the existing law using the correct short-form. See the following page for more detail about how to add references in the correct format: Short-form references in Origin notes

If you need to expand or collapse all origin notes in your working version, click the Tools menu on the upper toolbar and select either Show all Origin Notes or Hide all Origin Notes.