Why did my amendment not auto-apply?

Anatomy of an amendment

Table of errors

Note - the ‘Applied amendment error' message will quote the assigned amendment number if the amendment has one e.g. “Amendment 3”. In the screenshots below, the amendments didn’t have assigned numbers so the DNumber is quoted instead.

Error message	Potential issues
	If it the amendment was derived from an inline List of Draft Amendments (LoDA) and the traditional version had been manually edited, the instruction may no longer be recognised. You may need to manually apply the amendment. Check for typos including punctuation at the end of the amendment’s instruction e.g. a full stop If it’s a long title amendment: check that it doesn’t contain a line number in the location line of the amendment, or check that “Long Title” is capitalised if it has been created via a traditional LoDA If it is a stand part motion, check the wording is correct. Thing like “Minister listed below” won’t apply as only “Member” includes the ‘listed below’ phrasing.
	Check the ordinal e.g. “second” is correct Check the word in single quotes is spelt correctly Note - the case & punctuation rule behind ordinals: NIA is case insensitive; and NIA is punctuation insensitive.
	Check the page and line number information is correct
	Place your cusor inside the amendment’s quoted structure and open the Attributes right-hand panel. is the document type correct (for list of document types, click here) is the indent level correct? Place your cursor inside the provision within the quoted structure. Is the provision description correct? E.g. if you’re inserting a new paragraph (which looks like a subsection) into an Order in Council, the element would be called “Paragraph” and not “Subsection”.
	Conflicting amendments being applied in the same location: only one amendment will be applied and the other amendment(s) will be captured by this error message.
	This is a warning message rather than an error message. The warning is only there so that you check the insertion ordering of the amendments If the amendments all had sort codes, this warning does not appear as the insert order will be determined by the sort code information.

General advice & tips

• Amendments created via an inline List of Draft Amendments (LoDA) should auto-apply without errors. Caveats to this include

  • If you’ve manually changed the traditional wording of the inline generated amendment, the new instruction might not be recognised;

  • If the amendment was corrupted somehow in its generation, but you probably would have noticed whilst drafting it;

  • If there are more than one amendment in the same location (overlapping) or more than one provision being inserted in the same location and missing sort code information, an error will be generated

• Consider testing auto-apply once you’ve generated your set of amendments before submitting them (especially for OLC who are leaning towards traditionally drafted amendments rather than inline).

• As a reminder: amendments to amendments won’t get auto-applied. You will need to update the target amendment first, before selecting the target amendment for application. They will get included in count of amendments on the green success message so, you might see “10 out of 11 amendments were applied” but not see any error cards in the Review panel. The missing amendment that didn’t get applied would be the amendment to amendment.

• Use the troubleshooting tips in the Table of Errors to see if you can work out what the problem is

• If there are any that you can’t work out, report them to Lawmaker team via SMC and they can assess whether this is a bug or a new scenario that needs handling and prioritise accordingly

For information on how to manually apply amendments (those inserting new provisions) see Preparing 'as amended' NI bill versions | Check-for-any-warnings-and-errors-identified-when-applying-the-amendments