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Preparing the ‘as amended’ bill version

This is the business process for preparing a bill after amendments at an amending stage have been agreed to.

Auto-application of amendments can only happen if the bill version you are applying them to has page-line information inside it. When creating a new version of the bill as part of the auto-application process, it will take care of this for you. However, if you want to apply amendments to a version of the bill you have started updating (e.g. OPC printing points) then you MUST make sure you have made those changes to a version of the bill containing page-line information. To do this duplicate the published version of the bill and de-select the ‘strip out page-line information’ as you need this in the bill for auto-application of amendments to work later.

The recommended approach to updating as amended bill versions is a 5-step process which will guide you through the necessary sequence of steps to produce a final version ready for publishing at the end.  This section takes each section in turn: 

Pre-flight checks

  1. Before you publish a bill, always start with a clean bill  

    1. You should have done this already when preparing the As Introduced version but double check there are no ‘bad’ document checks, remove all comments and delete any jrefs 

  2. Before applying amendments, always start with a clean set of amendments 

    1. To check if the amendments are clean, select them using check boxes on the ‘Amendment Manager’ tab before applying them and open them in the Editor (Amendment Actions > Create temporary list) 

      1. Check Document Checks right-hand panel in the Editor to double check there are no mandatory checks that need addressing

      2. Remove any comments from the ‘Review’ right-hand panel 

  3. [COMMONS ONLY] Update new clause and new schedule amendments with location information 

    1. This is particularly useful if there are a large number of new clause and/or new schedule amendments as it will save you time when dragging them to the correct location in your bill after they have been applied 

    2. Open the Amendment Information right-hand panel for each new clause amendment and update the ‘Location’ box with “before” or “after”; and update the ‘Provision’ box with the appropriate provision number in the format “sec_22” for sections (clauses) and “sch_3” for schedules.

Apply amendments & check results 

  1. From the Amendment Manager, select the amendments you want auto-applied and run Amendment Actions > Apply Amendments.   

    1. Consider using filters to make it easier to 'select all' amendments to apply e.g., filter by Member 

    2. You can apply amendments to the same bill version in batches 

    3. Large bills containing lots of amendments can sometimes take a while to auto-apply (~3 mins) 

    4. Create new bill version if you have not already created an as amended version 

  2. Accept all the applied amendments displayed as tracked changes  

    1. If it is a large bill, use Actions > Edit portion of document mode 

    2. Click on the Accept All Amendments button at the top of Inline Amendments r-h panel 

    3. Check for any new Document Check messages (ignore advisory or x-ref doc check errors for now as they will be dealt with as part of ‘Finalise Document’ stage) 

  3. In the Editor, move to the Review r-h panel where auto-apply warning messages are posted.    

    1. Some messages warn you that the amendments were applied but need checking e.g. if there was more than one paragraph being inserted by different amendments in the same place, the warning message is asking you to check the sort order;

    2. Some messages warn you that a certain amendment couldn’t be applied; in this case, open up the specified amendment in a temporary list and check for any obvious mistakes e.g. page-line information or whitespace at the end of the instruction if it’s inserting new provisions. If you cannot fix the amendment, right-click in the quoted structure and select “Copy content of quoted structure” and manually paste it in the correct location.

    3. Delete the warnings that you’ve dealt with as you go so you can keep track of which issues you have resolved.

  4. If you need to manually apply amendments: 

    1. Open the PDF of the published bill to help work out location of insertions/leave outs 

    2. Select the amendment(s) that could not be applied on the Amendment Manager and open them in a temporary list 

    3. Display the list side-by-side with your bill (use the Windows button on your keyboard with the left arrow to divide your monitor view in half) as in this example below: 

    5. To copy provisions inside a quoted structure:  

      1. Place cursor inside the quoted structure of the amendment 

      2. Right-click and select "copy content of quoted structure" 

      3. Place cursor in the bill where you would like to paste the content and use Ctrl + V.    

      4. Check for locked nums when you do this, they may need manually removing (right-mouse-click > Lock/unlock num)  

    6. To copy text from the amendment instruction:  

      1. Highlight and copy the text within the quotation marks 

      2. Place cursor in the bill where you would like to paste the content and use Ctrl + V 

      3. To insert new clauses which contain grouping levels, e.g., a Part you will need to copy the content of the quoted structure and paste it directly into your document in the correct location. 

When checking auto-applied amendments, you may need to remove the lock on newly inserted provisions. See https://lawmaker.scrollhelp.site/help/live/how-to-use-locked-nums-in-uk-amendments for more information on why you need to remove locks on nums when amendments are applied.

Finalise document 

To finalise the document, you need to close the document in the Editor and return to the ‘Project’ tab.  To minimise the number of repeating steps in this process, the recommended sequence is: 

  1. https://lawmaker.scrollhelp.site/help/live/updating-document-information-from-project-tab (e.g., bill number, version rubric, printing dates) 

  2. https://lawmaker.scrollhelp.site/help/live/finalising-a-document (select what you need from the options e.g., renumber, update x-refs, reinsert front/back covers including table of contents) 

    1. If you inserted a new front cover, you would need to open the whole bill to update the Department name on the front cover. 

Final checks

  1. Open the document in the Editor 

    1. Check Document Checks r-h panel 

      1. The only issues you should see here are invalid x-refs that Lawmaker was unable to resolve or benign ‘advisory’ document checks 

      2. Correct the invalid x-refs for anything obvious (or is this an OPC responsibility?) 

    2. Save changes when you have dealt with all Document Check warnings 

    3. Check the Table of Contents – did renumber work as expected?  Sometimes a locked num that was not dealt with in the ‘Auto-apply amendments’ stage can throw up unexpected results 

    4. Save and close the bill 

  2. From project tab: compare document versions 

    1. Compare the previous version of the bill with the as amended copy you have been working on to check where changes have been made 

    2. First you will need to duplicate BOTH working versions to strip out any page-line numbers (future version of Lawmaker will ignore page-line numbers in documents so you will not have to remember this step) 

    3. Start with the as amended bill version you have just created and run Actions > Compare Version https://lawmaker.scrollhelp.site/help/live/comparing-documents to compare it with the duplicated previous bill version 

    4. Generating a PDF might be a quicker way of skimming through the document looking for changes (and any missing printing point changes) 

  3. Send the PDF for checking

At the end of the stage, repeat all the steps above for any opposition amendments that were later agreed to.  This time, when applying amendments in step 1, select to update an existing version (the as amended version you have been working on)

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