The events last week involving Minister of Health Dr Fuad Khan raised the issue of the full-time or part-time status of the parliamentarian. As a Minister, he was presented with an ultimatum from the Prime Minister which required him to choose either his ministry or his medical private practice. He chose his ministry. However, the controversy revived the argument over the wider issue of the status of parliamentarians. On February 24, 2006, there was a debate in the House of Representatives on the 80th report of the Salaries Review Commission that addressed the issue of whether an elected parliamentarian who is a backbencher was full-time or not.
The then prime minister, Patrick Manning, said: "In the Westminster system, which is the system that we use, a Member of Parliament, a back-bencher, is not a full-time job. Back-benchers are authorised and entitled to do other jobs. When I was the Leader of the Opposition, I was authorised, if I so wished and was therefore entitled to do a job other than that. If I chose to be the Leader of the Opposition only, I adopted that position by choice and not because anything was forced on me. If I wished, as other Leaders of Opposition have done, I could have taken on another job and, therefore, be entitled to another salary over and above the salary that I was paid as Leader of the Opposition." (Hansard, House of Representatives, February 24, 2006, p. 809). This point of view made it clear that there is a distinction between full-time and part-time parliamentarians. Those parliamentarians who hold ministerial or parliamentary secretary status in the executive branch of government are considered to be holding full-time jobs. Those who do not hold those positions are considered part-time and are free to pursue other employment and, therefore, their remuneration is set at a lower level.
In a landmark decision, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council established a constitutional right for every MP to be paid a salary even if they do not take their oath of allegiance after their election. According to the Privy Council: "The Constitution by implication confers on members of the House a right to be paid. As a right conferred by the Constitution this is a right entitled to constitutional protection. There can be no objection in principle to a rule which ordinarily treats the taking of an oath of allegiance at the outset of a new session as a pre-condition of receiving salary. But the constitutional right to payment is emasculated if a duly elected member, present in the House and willing to take the oath and participate fully in the business of the House is denied payment because a procedural rule, outside the control of the member, prevents the taking of the oath. In such a situation the procedural rule must yield to the stronger imperative of the constitutional right." (Chandresh Sharma and Others v Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago: Privy Council Appeal No. 73 of 2006, para. 13).
This opinion of the Privy Council guaranteed MPs their salaries by diminishing the importance of the oath of allegiance to the level of a procedural rule. What is designed to confirm the loyalty of MPs to the State is now to be viewed as secondary to an implied constitutional right. The judgment made it clear that all MPs who were elected in December 2001 and did not take their oath of allegiance were to be paid. The failure to elect a Speaker was the will of the MPs present and voting, and it was within their control. Their votes were inconclusive and no Speaker was elected. The Privy Council put loyalty to the State below a right to salary. The controversy involving Dr Khan had to do with whether he could continue doing as a Minister since June 27, this year what he was permitted to do as a parliamentarian who did not hold ministerial office from May 24, last year, that is, to maintain his private practice.
The wider population expects full-time service from their parliamentarians in providing them with representation and in performing their parliamentary duties. This was highlighted, for example, in the work of the temporary pressure group known as the Keith Noel 136 Committee that was formed by citizen Stephen Cadiz some years ago to lobby all MPs to come together to fix the crime problem in a grand movement of consensus. One would imagine that Minister Stephen Cadiz now has a greater insight into the workings of a Parliament based on an adversarial system as opposed to a consensual one and now understands why all parliamentarians could not come together back then to fix the crime problem in the country and why that has not happened today either. Should the job of the individual MP continue to remain a part-time one or has the time arrived to consider the full-time MP with an increased salary and a prevention from pursuing other employment together with a suite of constitutional reforms?