Publishing bills even when no amendments were applied at a particular stage

Amendments link to a published bill version. If a bill moves to a new amending stage without being amended, you should republish the bill in Lawmaker to provide a clean slate for new amendments in the next amending stage.

This is particularly important for Lords and Scotland where the numbering assigned to new amendments is based on the existing published amendments which links to a published bill version.

Workaround

Even though an “as-amended” Bill version doesn’t need to be created, if you publish one internally in Lawmaker that will force the numbering to return to 1. It is best to do this immediately after the first amending stage is complete (i.e. when you know that there is no need to publish a real as-amended version) - this will mean that all amendments can be drafted against the new version. If it is done later, you can use the Move Amendments to another Stage feature to associate existing amendments with the new version.

1. Duplicate the last published version of the Bill and open in the Editor.

2. Click on the Document Information panel on the right

3. In the version rubric dropdown, select “Other…” and enter a name that will help you identify that this is a version published for the purposes of the subsequent stage only, e.g. “As Introduced - Report stage”

4. Wait a moment for the Bill to be updated and then save the document.

5. Generate a PDF of the Bill, making sure line numbering is on and that a snapshot will be saved.

6. Close the Editor and publish the new PDF snapshot.

7. You should now find that on the Amendment Workspace, Amendment Manager and Official List tabs, that the default version is now the custom version you entered in step 3 above.