[Lords] Preparing the ‘as amended’ bill version

Introduction

This is the business process for preparing a bill after amendments at an amending stage have been agreed to.

How to prepare a bill for introduction

1. Select OPC amendments from the ‘Amendment Manager’ and use “Amendment Actions > Apply Amendments”

   1. Select ‘Create a new version’ if you haven’t started making any changes to the bill version before applying these amendments;

   2. Select ‘Update existing version’ and select the appropriate version if you have already started making changes to the bill (see warning above)

2. Open auto-applied version:​

   1. Review tracked changes looking for:

      1. any obvious printing points (you can change the text inside the tracked changes - or outside the tracked changes and these changes will be kept when you accept all applied amendments)​; and

      2. locked nums that should not be locked (see the purple note panel below for more information on locked nums in amendments)

   2. Accept all applied amendments​

   3. Check for any new Document Check messages

      1. If any have appeared, it suggests that one of the accepted amendments didn’t work correctly. Report any issues to the Lawmaker Support Portal and correct the data manually (e.g. by deleting the badly applied amendment and manually applying it)​

   4. Check Review r-h panel for any amendments needing manual intervention. Go through them one-by-one:

      1. Some messages warn you that the amendments were applied but need checking e.g. if there was more than one paragraph being inserted by different amendments in the same place, the warning message is asking you to check the sort order;

      2. Some messages warn you that a certain amendment couldn’t be applied; in this case, open up the specified amendment in a temporary list and check for any obvious mistakes e.g. page-line information or whitespace at the end of the instruction if it’s inserting new provisions. If you cannot fix the amendment, right-click in the quoted structure and select “Copy content of quoted structure” and manually paste it in the correct location.

      3. Delete the warnings that you’ve dealt with as you go so you can keep track of which issues you have resolved.

   5. Renumber the whole document ​(see also Finalising a document for a time-saving alternative method for big bills - which includes updating x-refs and re-inserting front/back covers)

   6. Update x-refs on the whole document

      1. Check ‘Document Checks’ for cross-reference warnings​ e.g. cross references to provisions that have been removed through applied amendments.

      2. If you find a Document Check warning, click on the card in the ‘Document Check' right-hand panel and it will jump to the bad cross-reference. Right-click on the cross reference and select ‘Remove x-ref tag’ and then manually correct it (see To create cross references for more information)

   7. Update Document Information: bill number, version rubric, printing dates​ (see also Updating document information from project tab for a time-saving alternative method for big bills)

   8. Re-insert front & back covers/table of contents as necessary​

   9. Save changes

3. Generate a PDF (select line numbering)

4. Send the PDF for checking

5. At the end of the stage, repeat all the steps above for any opposition amendments that were later agreed to.  This time, when applying amendments in step 1, select to update an existing version (the as amended version you have been working on)