SIs and SSIs often include references to other laws and regulations (such as Acts, other SIs or EU legislation). These references are accompanied by a footnote which provides the citation of the reference and its legislative history, showing how the referenced provision has been amended by other legislation over time.
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All the references generated within the citation footnote are tagged and link to http://legislation.gov.uk. You can view the provision referred to by double-clicking on the reference and selecting Goto ref on the floating toolbar. The page will open in a new tab. |
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Structure of the citation footnote
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A citation footnote generated by Lawmaker will always begin with the citation of the legislative document, e.g. the SI year and number.It will then include amending history information for the reference if the reference you are adding the footnote to refers to a specific provision or range of provisions. For example, if it refers to a section, regulation, article, rule (or lower level provision) such as "section 9 of the Companies Act 2006".
What is included depends on information available on legislation.gov.uk.
The structure of the footnote will be the following: citation+amended provision+amending history information
For instance: 2016 asp 22. Section 1 was amended by paragraph 11(2) of the Schedule to the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 (asp 5).
2016 asp 22 is the citation of the reference,
Section 1 is the provision referred to which has been amended at some point,
paragraph 11(2) of the Schedule to the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 (asp 5 is the amendment history information relating to that provision.
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Reference type | Example of reference | Citation footnote output | Example of citation footnote output |
Document reference | Companies Act 2006 | Citation only | 2006 c. 46. |
Reference to a grouping level (e.g. to a Part, Chapter, Schedule, etc.) | Part 1 of the Companies Act 2006 | Citation only | 2006 c. 46. |
Reference to a specific provision (e.g. to a section, regulation, article, or rule) | section 9 of the Companies Act 2006 | Citation and amending history (when available) | 2006 c. 46. Section 9 was amended by section 3(2)(a) and (b), 72(2), 29(2), 2(b) and (a) and 28(2) of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 and section 2023 (c. 56) and section 93(3) and (2)(a) and (b) of, and paragraph 4 of Schedule 3 to, the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (c. 26). |
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The order of the amending provisions in a generated citation footnote may not always be correct. For instance "2007 asp 4. Section 119 was amended by paragraph 17(13)(c), (a)(i) and (ii) and (b) of Schedule 1 and 2 to S.S.I. 2013/211”. This is because Lawmaker uses the order of the provisions from the XML available on http://legislation.gov.uk , which sometimes is not sorted correctly. Future releases of Lawmaker will aim to improve this functionality. |
Which amendments are included in the footnote?
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For example, if the external reference is "section 1(1)(a) of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016" the footnote will present the amendment history information for section 1 (“2016 asp 22. Section 1 was amended by paragraph 11(2) of the Schedule to the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018”2018 (asp 5)”.
How is the amending history generated?
The amending history information is extracted from the textual amendment information available on legislation.gov.uk (also known as ‘F-notes' or 'footnotes’) available on revised versions of Acts and SIs on legislation.gov.uk .
Revised versions of legislation on http://legislation.gov.uk are versions of legislation that include amendments made by subsequent legislation. The term "revised" refers to the editorial process of incorporating amendments and other effects into legislation - the editorial team at The National Archives maintains these revised versions of legislation.
Here is an example of how that information appears a textual amendment footnote appears on a revised version on the website:
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More specifically - when When generating a citation footnote - , Lawmaker will first :
request the XML of the provision referred to from the revised version available on legislation.gov.uk
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extract all textual amendments from the XML
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convert each textual amendment into an amending statement which will be appended to the citation.
In order to do so, Note: Lawmaker requires that the data provided by legislation.gov.uk follows a certain structure and format, which isn’t always the case. When the data deviates from the expected format, Lawmaker will consider it as unintelligible and will not be able to extract the information.
In this case, it will provide the following message in brackets within the citation footnote “(<Amended provision> has amendments that couldn't be processed when generating this footnote)”.
This means that textual amendments were found on legislation.gov.uk but it was not possible to process them and insert them into the citation footnote.
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Why is there no amending history in the generated citation footnote?
The amending history information for a reference will be blank in any of the following cases:
Whole Document or Higher-Level Group Reference: if the reference you are adding the footnote to refers to a whole document or a higher level group (e.g. a Part or a Chapter), the amending history will not be included. For example, "the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011" or "Part 1 of the Companies Act 2006" will not have amending history.
If the reference is to a lower level provision - if it refers to a section, regulation, article, rule, etc. (e.g. "section 9 of the Companies Act 2006") - then the amending history will be included.No Revised Version Available: if the referenced document does not have a 'revised version' available on http://legislation.gov.uk, the amending history will not be included.
Lawmaker extracts the amending history information from the textual amendment footnotes available on these revised versions (see https://lawmaker.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/USERMANUAL/pages/521404417/Citation+footnotes+legislative+history+footnote#How-is-the-amending-history-generated%3F ).Unprocessable Textual Amendments: if the textual amendments are in a format that Lawmaker cannot extract. Lawmaker requires the amendments to be structured in a specific format to process them (see https://lawmaker.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/USERMANUAL/pages/521404417/Citation+footnotes+legislative+history+footnote#How-is-the-amending-history-generated%3F)
If any of these conditions are not met, the footnote will only contain the citation without the amending history.
"Cannot generate citation footnote” message
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