What's new in version 18?

Version 18 is a significant release which includes a range of new features and improvements. It also includes some bug fixes.

It was released on 6 January 2025.

New features and improvements

Auto-application of amendments

The auto-application process

Amendments can be now applied to a Bill version that is open in the Editor. As well as creating a new version containing the applied amendments or applying amendments to a previously saved working version, you can now apply amendments to a Bill that you have open in the Editor (any changes to the Bill will be saved as part of the application process). (LDAPP-4486)

Accepting amendments

Applied amendments can be accepted one-by-one as well as all at the same time. Much in the same way that individual tracked changes can be accepted, it is now possible to accept individual applied amendments using the inline amendment panel. (LDAPP-4467)

Improvements to the auto-application logic

There are a number of improvements to the types of amendments that can be handled by the auto-application feature and to the logic used in applying them:

• Amendments that insert provisions including a cross-heading, Part or Chapter can now be applied. Previously it was only possible to apply amendments that inserted a section/clause or smaller provision. Now amendments that insert a cross-heading containing a section When the amendments are accepted, some additional clean-up takes place to ensure the hierarchical structure of the document remains correct. (LDAPP-4515, LDAPP-4475, LDAPP-4523)

• Amendments which leave out text beginning with punctuation can now be applied successfully. (LDAPP-4543)

• Amendments to tables that leave out, insert or substitute words in a table cell can now be applied. (Amendments that leave out, insert, or substitute table rows will be handled in a future release.) (LDAPP-3107)

• Order that amendments with the same insertion location are applied is determined by the sort code value. This is particularly relevant for New Clause/Schedule amendments in the Commons but may be useful elsewhere too. (LDAPP-4471)

• Handling amendments to the same line has been improved so that application of a later amendment is not affected by the application of any earlier amendment in cases where the amendments rely on ordinal references (e.g. “after second “the” insert…”) or where one amendment leaves out text to the end of a line and another amendment inserts content “at end” of the same line. (LDAPP-4473)

See Applying Amendments.

Inline amendments

The performance of the Editor has been improved when the document contains a large number of inline amendments. In particular, keyboard lag when typing has been significantly reduced. (LDAPP-4480)

See Inline amendments.

Other amendment improvements and changes

Submitting amendments

The process for submitting amendments from the Amendment Manager and from within the Editor has been made more consistent. In particular, a new interface has been introduced that shows the different checks that have been carried out as part of the submission process and identifies the specific amendments that have failed any of the checks. (LNI-61)

See Submitting amendments.

Publishing amendment lists

Similarly to submitting amendments, there is a new interface making it clearer what checks were carried out as part of the publishing process when publishing amendment lists. (LNI-42)

See Publishing an amendment list.

Commons amendment list templates

Minor updates have been made to the templates for Commons Official lists (LDAPP-4384)

Reference tagging

Further improvements have been made to Lawmaker’s ability to tag external references in complex cases. In particular:

• Lists of references that refer to different types of provisions (e.g. section, paragraph and schedule references in ““in exercise of the powers conferred by sections 30C(5) to (7), 32(7), (8) and (13), 33(4A), (5) and (8) and 34(5) of, and paragraph 9(1) of Schedule 1 to, the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018”) are now tagged. (LDAPP-4532)

• Contextual references following the words “after”, “before” and “omit” in textual amendments are tagged correctly. (LDAPP-4500)

• References that rely on an alias are tagged even where the alias includes brackets (e.g. a reference to “F(No.2)A 2023” can now be handled) (LDAPP-4499)

• Some cases which shouldn’t be tagged are now handled appropriately (references inside defined terms and “that part” when it occurs in a phrase like “that partial”) (LDAPP-4479, LDAPP-4447)

See References.

SI/SSIs

Auto-generation of citation footnotes

Chapter numbers, e.g. “(c. 3)”, are now added to primary legislation references in a legislative history footnote. (LDAPP-4541)

See Citation footnotes (legislative history footnote)

Inserting italic headings in schedules

An option in the CCA to insert a “Italic Heading” is now present when you are working in a schedule of an SI or SSI. This will insert a Section element without a section number (i.e. without “Section 1” before the heading). (LDAPP-4545)

Order of procedures when creating a new SI/SSI project

The order of procedures in the dropdown menu in the Create New Project dialogue box has been changed to put the most common procedures (e.g. Made Negative) at the top. (LDAPP-4521)

See Creating a new project.

Increased space for signatures in PDF

The space between the end of the text and the start of the signature has been increased in the PDF following user feedback. (LDAPP-4562)

PDF generation and formatting

Auto-hyphenation option for tables

A new option has been added to the table properties dialogue box that allows you to choose between auto-hyphenation and no hyphenation within the table. Auto-hyphenation will automatically hyphenate text in the table (using an in-built dictionary of syllables). This will be particularly useful for complex tables with a number of columns where, without hyphenation, text would get squashed together or overlap due to the presence of long words. (LDAPP-4504, LDAPP-4511)

See Inserting and managing tables.

Table number formatting

Table numbers in PDFs are now bold (as they appear in the Editor). (LDAPP-4522)

Document management (Project tab)

The labelling of snapshots and significant versions has been improved.

Significant versions

Significant versions (e.g. published, shared and submitted to TNA versions) now show the version label from the working version they were created from and the stage to which they relate to make them easier to identify and distinguish. Hovering over the organisation short code will also display a tooltip showing the name of the user who published/shared etc. the document. (LNI-8)

Snapshot versions

Snapshot versions (created when you save a snapshot in the editor, create a PDF, share a document or duplicate a document etc.) are now named in a consistent way following the pattern “{type} {label}”. For example, all PDF snapshots will now start with “PDF” and continue with any user-defined label specified in the Generate PDF dialog box. (LNI-39)

One impact of this change is that it is now possible to publish, or submit to TNA, PDF snapshots that have been given a user-defined label.

See Documents and folders on the Project Tab .

Minor editor improvements

A few minor improvements to the editing experience have been implemented:

• The accept/reject/reply actions in the review panel now work where the insertion or deletion affects a locked element (e.g. a reference). (LDAPP-4519)

• When inserting a definition, an extra “text” placeholder is created after the defined term to make it easier to continue typing the definition after the defined term. (LDAPP-4553)

• Some edge cases where Lawmaker didn’t behave as expected when applying formatting (e.g. bold, italic, underline) to more than one provision have been resolved. (LDAPP-4463)

• Some cases where the cursor and/or screen jumps to a different location after the completion of an action have been fixed. (LDAPP-4547)

Quoted structures

Inserting quoted structure from CCA

You can now insert a quoted structure by pressing Enter and selecting Quoted Structure. (You can still insert one by pressing ctrl+Q or using the Insert menu.) (LDAPP-4481)

Inserting multiple quoted structures

The behaviour of the existing Insert Adjacent quoted structure function has been modified so it can now be used in any case where you need to insert a quoted structure after the quoted structure your cursor is in. (If you use the general Insert quoted structure function while your cursor is in a quoted structure, then a nested quoted structure will be created.)

The Insert Adjacent quoted structure function will now be useful in two specific situations:

• Where you need to create multiple quoted structures, one after the other, to represent several discrete textual amendments, e.g. where you are specifying that several definitions should be inserted “at the appropriate place”.

• When you are creating a complex textual amendment that starts with a lower level provision, e.g. a sub-paragraph, but continues with a higher level provision, e.g. a paragraph. In that case, the first quoted structure will contain the sub-paragraph and an adjacent quoted structure will contain the paragraph, and the start/end quotation marks will need to be adjusted appropriately in the Update quoted structure properties dialog box.

(LDAPP-4508)

See Quoted structures .

Validation

As part of ongoing work to improve how validation works, this release contains a few changes:

• Errors that relate to the underlying Akoma Ntoso XML schema now appear in their own panel XML Warnings. We’re working generally to reduce the possibility of these errors appearing in the first place but in the meantime we’re planning to issue specific guidance to help users when these errors occur. (LDAPP-4548)

• In the Document Checks panel, we’ve changed the phase categories to “Drafting”, “Preflight”, “References” and “Spaces”. These are all on by default but you can deselect any of them temporarily to help you focus on a specific category. The “References” category covers all the errors relating to cross-references and external references. The “Spaces” category covers the leading and trailing space errors. (LDAPP-4554)

• The “quickfix” links in the validation errors now work both in the Document Checks panel and in the tooltip that appears when you hover over the affected provision in the Editor. (LDAPP-4544)

• A few minor updates have been made to the validation rules themselves. (LDAPP-4477)

See Document checks - validating your document

Accessibility and miscellaneous

Accessibility of login screen

We’ve improved the accessibility of the login screen. (LDAPP-4509)

Temporary banners

We can now add temporary banners to the different Lawmaker environment to notify users of upcoming changes and other important information. (LDAPP-4540)

Oxygen upgrade

We’ve upgraded Oxygen (used by the Editor) to version 26.1.0 to get the benefit of a few bug fixes that the upgrade included. (LDAPP-4503, LDAPP-4513)

Integration with parliaments' members data

We’ve made the process for obtaining up-to-date member data from the different parliaments' open data APIs more robust so it can cope with any of the APIs being unavailable for a short time. (LNI-142)

Support portal link

We’ve updated the link to the support portal in the menu that appears when you click on your username in the top right of the screen. It now points to https://support.lawmaker.legislation.gov.uk. (LDAPP-4555)

Origins and destinations

Version 18 includes some beta features in relation to the ongoing work to enable the generation of tables of origins and tables of destinations. This functionality is generally only available for Bills with a “Consolidation Bill” subtype.

The format of origin notes have been changed so they are more like footnotes and behave the same in the Editor. The origin notes can now be tagged if the acronyms used in the notes have been defined. (LDAPP-4528, LDAPP-4520, LDAPP-4529, LDAPP-4325, LDAPP-4535)

Bug fixes