Types of amendments currently handled
For the first iteration of inline and auto-apply amendments, we've focused on the 3 main types of amendment:
Insert (including inserting new clauses/sections and schedules)
Leave out, and
Substitute (e.g. leave out X and insert Y).
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Introduction
Lawmaker enables you create parliamentary amendments by editing the existing version of the Bill instead of drafting them as “traditional” amendments. In Lawmaker, this is called “inline amending”.
The process is similar to make changes to document in tracked changes mode.
Lawmaker can then automatically generate versions of the amendments in the traditional form which can be submitted and managed in the same way as amendments that were drafted from the outset in the traditional form.
In this Section
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Working with inline amendments
When creating your inline amendment document, you will be able to specify a proposer which will be applied to all inline amendments in that document. You can update the proposer and supporter information in an inline document which will update all amendments in that document. Alternatively you can choose to update individual amendment's proposers and/or supporters when viewing the traditional form of the inline amendments.
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For larger bills, it is also possible to open portions of the inline document, allowing you to create inline amendments against specific provisions which will help with performance issues.
Types of amendments currently handled
For the first iteration of inline amendments, we've focused on the 3 main types of amendment:
Insert (including inserting new clauses/sections and schedules)
Leave out, and
Substitute (e.g. leave out X and insert Y).
Converting inline amendments to traditional amendments
As soon as an inline amendment has been saved, it can be viewed in traditional form and is available on the 'Amendment Manager' tab. The traditional amendments that are generated will include proposer and supporter info, Dnumbers and any other relevant metadata (e.g. Ids and location attributes) equivalent to what the amendment would have if drafted as a traditional amendment. Inline-derived amendments can be edited in traditional form. This will set a warning marker against the equivalent inline amendment which lets you know that the traditional form of the inline amendment has been updated and prevents you from editing it. Markers can be manually removed from the inline amendment if you did want to overwrite the changes made to the traditionally formatted amendment.
Managing traditional amendments generated from inline amendments
Amendments generated from an inline document can be handled in exactly the same way as a traditionally generated amendment once they appear on the 'Amendment Manager' tab. They can be submitted, tabled, set to 'On hold' etc.; and they will be included in the official lists as part of the list generation process.
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Auto-applying amendments
Users can generate a copy of a Bill with any amendments they choose applied to it (regardless of the status of the amendment or whether the amendment is an inline amendment or traditionally drafted amendment). All successfully applied amendments will appear marked up in the bill version with a corresponding 'inline amendment card' in the "Inline Amendments" right-hand panel in the Editor. In the document itself, the applied amendments will show up as tracked changes. In the event that an amendment cannot be applied e.g. the page/line information is incorrect or it overlaps with another applied amendment, it will be listed separately on the "Review" right-hand panel in the Editor with a brief description explaining why. Handling amendments in this way means that you will know exactly which amendments out of a batch were applied and which were not.
Manually applying amendments
You can also continue to apply amendments manually, for example any amendment that couldn't be applied using the auto-application feature, and these can be accepted using the usual 'accept'/'reject' buttons on the 'Review' right-hand panel, if applied in tracked change mode.
Accepting applied amendments
Once amendments have been applied to a bill using the 'Apply Amendments' feature, a clean version of the Bill can be created using the 'Accept All' button on the "Inline Amendments" right-hand panel in the Editor.
An 'as amended' version of the bill can be constructed from both automatically and manually applied amendments and you can make 'silent' printing changes as required around these applied amendments as you currently do.
What is planned for future iterations
The inline amending (and auto-application of amendments) features will be extended to cover the following types of amendments in future iterations:
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We will also continue to refine how inline amendments behave to make the process more robust while keeping it flexible. Feedback on edge cases that aren't correctly handled at the moment will be essential to refine future iterations and should be directed to the Lawmaker support email address.children