Creating a List of Draft Amendments (LoDA)
- Matt Lynch
- Estelle Holmes (Deactivated)
All amendments to a Bill are drafted within a List of Draft Amendments (LoDA). A LoDA can be one of two types:
Traditional: in this case will be a blank document to which you can add one or more amendments in the official format published by the relevant parliament, where each amendment contains an instruction to modify the Bill and identifies the provision number, page and line position of the modification as required (e.g. ‘Clause 5, page 3, line 2, leave out “A person” and insert “The Minister”’)
Inline: in this case, the LoDA is a copy of the published Bill and you create amendments within the copy in a similar way to how you might do tracked changes to a Word document.
How to create a LoDA
In the project you are working on, go to the Amendment Workspace tab and click + New.
Select the type of amendments you want to create.
Select the appropriate House (UK amendments only) and Stage.
Enter a name for the list.
Select the default proposer for amendments in the list (optional).
Click Create.
Lawmaker will open the new List of Draft Amendments in the Editor and you can proceed to add amendments.
Hints and tips
When you save your amendment list, your locks will be released. At the same time, the "Amendment Information" panel will be updated with any changes to the instruction resulting in different 'location' information e.g. if you changed a page or line number etc.
Selecting a proposer when you first create the list is optional. It will mean that your first amendment is already populated with a proposer making it quicker to get started drafting the content of your amendment
The default permissions set will be that any user in the same organisation as you will have read/write access to your document including the ability to submit one or more amendments within it.
The bill version will default to the latest published bill version in the selected project.
If there have been no published bills yet, the default bill version will be “As Introduced” thereby allowing you to draft amendments in advance of the amending stages
The LoDA’ preface contains placeholder elements for stage information and a subtitle. These can be deleted if not required
When you save your List of Draft Amendments, any new amendment will be automatically assigned a unique number constructed from the abbreviated form of the organisation you belong to, followed by a number e.g. HoC1 which will stay with the amendment throughout its lifetime and can provide a handy reference for the amendment before the official number is assigned
UK Amendments
The list of Members available in the "Proposer" drop down will update according to the selected House
If there are no published bill versions in the Project, the default House will be "House of Commons" but this can be changed
Lords: the Clause or Schedule number should be included in the text of the amendment instruction rather than inserting a separate interstitial heading. Whenever a PDF is generated, the system will automatically create interstitial headings containing the clause or schedule number.
Ping Pong motions and amendments
See Creating ping pong motions and amendments on Lists of Draft Amendments (LoDAs)