Difference between revisions of "Editorial Update/Blanket Amendments"

Revision as of 12:37, 8 September 2022

Overview

A provision may make an amendment or modification that is framed in such a way as to affect legislation generally rather than any specific enactment. We call this a “blanket amendment‟.

An example of a blanket amendment that changes the text of affected legislation might be: “For the words "Supreme Court Act 1981" wherever they occur in any enactment substitute "Senior Courts Act”.

During the identify and record effects tasks we will identify textual blanket amendments. We will identify which legislation is affected by the blanket amendments but we won’t work out and record every provision that needs to be changed as a result.

If you are presented with a “blanket amendment” type of effects you should:

Read the affecting provision carefully and ensure you are clear on what words needs editing and whether there are any exceptions to the amendment.
Open the whole Act on legislation.gov.uk and search for the words to be edited, the amendment will usually be a substitution. Make a list of all the affected provisions, it is helpful to add the list to the ‘notes’ against the blanket amendment effect so that the reviewer knows what you have changed.
Use the Table of Contents to check out the most appropriate level of the Act in to which to carry out your amendment. For example, if there is only one change to one provision required you can check out the individual provision but if there are a lot of amendments you may want to check out a whole Part or even the whole Act.
Follow the appropriate instructions for the amendment concerned, each time you carry out the amendment you should highlight the task in the ‘Resource Manager’ window and a new annotation will be created (unless the words are in the same provision and then you will get just one annotation).
The annotation should read “Words in Act substituted XX” or “Words in Measure substituted” – the individual provisions will not be specified.
Add a Note for Reviewer to tell them which provisions you have amended.

Blanket amendment by The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1043)

There are some blanket amendments by The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1043), which you need to be aware of when doing secondary update. It would be helpful if editors could check their secondary update legislation to see if it may be affected by these blanket amendments and, if so, let Richard or another reviewer know so we can carry these amendments through.

In a nutshell, the 2011 Order changes old references to the “European Community” to new references to the “European Union”.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/1043/made

Art. 4 substitutes certain non-adjectival uses of the word “Community”, etc. Art. 5 substitutes a particular phrase wherever it occurs. Art. 6 substitutes particular adjectival uses of the word “Community”, etc. Please note the exceptions provided for in arts. 3, 4(2), 6(4)(5). In particular, NI Orders in Council mentioned in section 24(5)(c), (e) or (g) of the Interpretation Act 1978 (and any secondary legislation made under them) are excluded*. Arts. 8-10 do the same thing for Welsh legislation.

*Exception: note that Orders in Council made under the Northern Ireland Act 2000 (c. 1) by the Secretary of State during the suspension of the NI Assembly between 2000 and 2007 do not count as “Northern Ireland legislation” for the purposes of 1978 c. 30, s. 24(5) and are not excluded.

The drafter has provided handy examples of when and when not to change the text in Annex II of the Explanatory Note (Table of Examples as to how this Order will operate on terms in legislation):

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/1043/note/made

In Annex I of the Explanatory Note the drafter also provided some examples of secondary legislation that is affected by these blanket amendments and we have used this to put some effects in TOES. However, we have not captured all affected secondary legislation and so it would help if editors could check their update document before update starts to see if it may be affected. If it looks like it may be affected, let Richard or another reviewer know so that they can change TOES to add an effect which will then show up in your update timeline. If you spot it after update has been done, then let Richard or another reviewer know so that a correction can be done. I would advise doing a Ctrl+F search across the whole document looking for the following terms:

“Community”
“Communities”
“Article 310 of the Treaty of Amsterdam”

We asked the data management team to query the secondary legislation to find other legislation potentially affected by this blanket amendment and we have added their findings into TOES. These entries are marked with a note mentioning “data management query”. But I’m sure we will not have captured everything by this means. Equally, I expect we will have captured “false positives” whose wording has changed between being made and 22.4.2011.

Note on applying The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 blanket amendments that have been captured in TOES so far

Please note that we have provided very general TOES data for the effects created from the drafter’s examples: https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affecting/uksi/2011/1043/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number

For example, the effect below has a very general affecting provision:

1995 SI1159	Blanket amendment	words substituted	E+W+S+NI	2011 SI1043	art. 003-6 8-10		NB This entry taken from examples in EN	art. 002	22/04/2011	wholly in force

If we look at the affected document for this effect we can see that it contains 4 references to the European Community in the Preamble and regs. 5(5), 10(4). (We would ignore the use of “European Communities” in the reference to the European Communities Act 1972 in the Preamble as it is excluded by art. 3(2)(g) of the 2011 Order).

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/1159/made

Annotation wording

Because of the general way the TOES data has been entered all the annotations will automatically come out as something like:

Blanket amendment words substituted (22.4.2011) by The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1043), arts. 2, 3-6, 8-10

Editors should change the annotations of amendments hitting UK and Scottish SIs to:

Word[s] in [provision] substituted (22.4.2011) by The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1043), arts. 2, 3-6

And editors should change the annotations of amendments hitting Welsh SIs to:

Word[s] in [provision] substituted (22.4.2011) by The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1043), arts. 2, 8-10

Examples

SI 2002/618: "the Community" is defined in reg. 2 (see NI version):

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/618/regulation/2

The blanket amendment was not applied to this defined term (but note that the reference to "Community" within the definition was amended).

See also reg. 11, where the defined term "the Community" was not amended, but the reference to "European Community" after "Official Journal of the" was:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/618/regulation/11

@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 *Follow the appropriate instructions for the amendment concerned,  each time you carry out the amendment you should highlight the task in the ‘Resource Manager’ window and a new annotation will be created (unless the words are in the same provision and then you will get just one annotation).
 *The annotation should read “Words in Act substituted XX”  or “Words in Measure substituted” – the individual provisions will not be specified.
+*Add a Note for Reviewer to tell them which provisions you have amended.
 ==Blanket amendment by The Treaty of Lisbon (Changes in Terminology) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1043)==