What's new in version 17?

This is a major release containing a range of new features, significant enhancements to the referencing functionality, a new beta feature to generate citation footnotes in SIs and some bug fixes.

It was released on 21 August 2024.

References to other provisions and documents

Reference tagging (including external references)

The referencing functionality in Lawmaker has been significantly improved and expanded in v.17.

The most significant change is that the Tag References function will now tag external references (i.e. references to other enacted legislation like Acts, SIs or EU legislation) as well as internal references (i.e. references to provisions within the same document).

Other improvements include:

• The tag references function is much better able to distinguish between internal and external references.

• References that rely on other reference for their full context (e.g. where there is a reference in the opening words of a provision which qualifies every reference in the child provisions) are now handled correctly in most cases.

• The tag references function now updates and, where necessary, retags existing references at the same time.

• The colour of internal links has been updated to make it more accessible and external references have been given a different colour.

To tag external references, Lawmaker uses the data behind http://legislation.gov.uk to lookup and identify the appropriate legislative documents.

In addition, the tag references function now includes support for:

• References that refer back to a previously mentioned Act or SI etc., e.g. “section 7 of that Act”

• References that are external due to their context but don’t directly include the title of the Act or SI etc., e.g. references in provisions following a statement like “Section 32 of the Criminal Justice Act 2000 is amended as follows.”

• References that rely on defined names for an Act or SI rather than its proper name, e.g. “Regulation 17 of the 2009 Regulations”, so long as the name is defined in the same document somewhere.

See References and Guide to x-ref changes in version 17 .

Referencing toolbar

The new referencing toolbar (accessible by double clicking on a reference) makes it easy to complete a number of actions directly in the Editor.

You can jump directly to any referenced provision, whether it is internal or external. In the latter case, the referenced provision will open up in http://legislation.gov.uk in a separate tab.

The text of a reference can still be directly edited in the Editor but you can also use the Edit reference option in the toolbar to update the text and metadata fields if necessary (the ability to edit the reference text directly will be removed in the next release).

You can also trigger an update of the reference, mark it to be ignored or remove the reference mark-up from the toolbar.

See References.

Creating internal references from provisions in the Editor (rather than the structure view)

By right-clicking on a provision in the Editor and selecting Copy reference to provision you can choose a reference to that provision to be copied to the clipboard which can then be pasted elsewhere.

This replicates the functionality that was previously only available from the structure view.

See References.

Generating citation footnotes in SIs

Lawmaker v.17 includes a new beta feature to automatically generate legislative history footnotes for external references in an SI or SSI.

This feature relies on the data from legislation.gov.uk to generate footnotes that contain summarised amendment history of the referenced provision.

See Citation footnotes (legislative history footnote) for more on this.

Church Measures

Lawmaker can now be used to create and manage Church Measures.

Church Measure is a new document type available from the Create New Project dialog box. Broadly speaking the functionality and presentation for Church Measures is the same as for UK Bills. However, there is no ability to create amendments or amendment lists.

See Drafting Church Measures, Managing a Church Measure in Parliament and Creating an Enacted version of a draft Church Measure .

Quoted text

When drafting a textual amendment to another enactment that only involves a word or phrase rather than a whole provision, you can insert a Quoted Text element to represent the text that is being left out, inserted or substituted.

The new “Quoted text” element can be inserted from the Content Completion Assistant by pressing Enter and selecting Quoted text.

Quote marks automatically appear but can be removed or altered if necessary.

See Quoted Text.

Sorting amendments by marshalled order on the Amendment Manager Tab

A new option on the Amendment Manager (via the Sort by marshalled order button) allows you to sort all the visible amendments by the order that they would appear in a marshalled list, including reflecting any Order of Consideration. This feature uses the same logic for generating a marshalled list that is already present in Lawmaker.

The previous “OoC sort” function has been removed.

See Sorting amendments on the Amendment Manager Tab.

Scripted marshalled list improvements

Some limited improvements to the functionality for generating Scripted Marshalled Lists in the Scottish Parliament have been implemented.

These are:

• new CCA options to add script boxes with or without headings;

• new CCA options to add script boxes before or after the currently selected amendment;

• CCA option to add the pre-populated ‘Question on amendment’ box directly from anywhere in the list, without having to create a blank script box first.

Submitting amendments from a LoDA

When amendments are submitted directly from a list of draft amendments, the receiving organisation (e.g. the Commons or Scottish Parliament) will also receive a copy of the list (accessible from the Amendment Workspace tab) so they can see the order in which they appeared on that list and to help them manage the amendment checking and tabling process.

See Submitting amendments.

Uploading amendment list XML to create new amendments

A new option on the Amendment Workspace tab allows you to upload amendment list XML in order to create new Draft amendments against a specific bill version.

Amendment list XML can be downloaded by selecting ‘Download ZIP file’ from the Actions menu next to any amendment list on the Amendment Workspace or Official Lists tabs. The ZIP file contains XML which can then be uploaded to any other bill project to recreate the amendments from that list as new draft amendments.

See Uploading amendment lists to create new amendments.

Editing fragments of a schedule

Schedules in Bills and SIs are now fragmented at the grouping level (e.g. Part, Chapter, cross-heading) as well as at the schedule level.

This means that more than one user can edit provisions in the same schedule at the same time. It also means that the Edit Portion function can be used to open up a portion of a schedule rather than only the whole schedule.

In consequence of this change, the structure view now shows the grouping levels within a schedule by default.

See Opening and editing a portion of document and Locking document fragments/multi-user editing.

Schedules created in documents before this version is released will not immediately be fragmented in the new way - they will remain as single fragments that can only be edited and locked at that level. However, as soon as the document is saved again after this release, all schedules in the document will be fragmented at the grouping level.

SI improvements and changes

• Dates in the date block that are left empty now automatically show as three asterisks “***”.

• If all the paragraphs within a regulation or article are deleted other than one, the remaining paragraph is automatically unwrapped so an undivided regulation or article is left.

• The banner is now locked in the Editor to prevent accidental changes. It will still update automatically if the procedure is changed.

• The content of the subject, title and number blocks at the beginning of an SI are now locked in the main Editor window to prevent accidental changes. You can still update the subject by clicking on it and selecting the appropriate subjects in the dialog box. The title and number can still be updated via the Document Information panel on the right.

• The list of available subjects in the Subjects dialog box has been updated.

• OFGEM and OFCOM have been added as new Lawmaker organisations.

Bug fixes

SI/SSIs

Editor

PDFs

Amendments

Document management (Project tab, comparison, permissions etc.)

API and misc

Known issues

This section of the release note highlights any minor issues identified with the release that will be corrected in a future release:

• Order of provisions in CCA is incorrect after a quoted text element is inserted: Normally, if your cursor is in a provision such as a subsection, when you press Enter, the item at the top of the list will be the most common sibling provision to the one you are in. So, if you are in a subsection then “Subsection” will be at the top of the list. This means that pressing Enter twice, or pressing ctrl+Enter originally, will insert the common sibling element. However, in version 17, if you have inserted a quoted text element into a provision and you subsequently press Enter when your cursor is not in the quoted text element, then “Quoted text” will appear at the top of the CCA instead leading to incorrect behaviour in relation to pressing Enter twice or pressing ctrl+Enter.