Please al­low me to re­spond to your ed­i­to­r­i­al of Au­gust 8 on mat­ters af­fect­ing MPs.In the first in­stance, while it is true that de­bat­ing im­por­tant is­sues at 2 am is nei­ther healthy nor ef­fi­cient, the sug­ges­tion that we should start Par­lia­men­tary sit­tings at 8 am does not recog­nise the fact that speak­ing in Par­lia­ment is not all that we do or that there are very good rea­sons why Par­lia­ments all over the world start their sit­tings in the af­ter­noon or late morn­ing.The role of an MP is mul­ti­fac­eted, and that of a min­is­ter even more so.MPs are re­quired to be avail­able to their con­stituents at all hours, but es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the morn­ing pe­ri­od and dur­ing nor­mal work­ing hours.

Min­is­ters are re­quired to at­tend to pub­lic busi­ness dur­ing nor­mal work­ing hours and to be avail­able to the pub­lic and stake­hold­er groups.A 1.30 pm start thus al­lows MPs to at­tend to their con­stituents be­fore com­ing to the House and al­lows min­is­ters to at­tend to mat­ters of pub­lic im­por­tance or mat­ters of State and/or to par­tic­i­pate in com­mit­tees that scru­ti­nise gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and de­ci­sions.By start­ing Par­lia­men­tary ses­sions at 8 am, MPs will no longer be avail­able for con­stituen­cy du­ties on the day of a sit­ting, nor could com­mit­tee meet­ings be held on sit­ting days, as is our cur­rent prac­tice.Min­is­ters would sim­ply be un­avail­able to the pub­lic on sit­ting days. I can as­sure you that those who agree now with the 8 am pro­pos­al will com­plain bit­ter­ly if they can't con­tact their MPs or see a min­is­ter on a sit­ting day and the work of par­lia­men­tary over­sight com­mit­tees would be com­pro­mised, since there are on­ly so many days avail­able dur­ing the week for these com­mit­tee meet­ings.

Fur­ther, un­der our present rules, it would al­so make it im­pos­si­ble for MPs to raise ur­gent mat­ters of pub­lic im­por­tance pri­or to the start of a sit­ting, since these mat­ters are re­quired to be sub­mit­ted for ap­proval sev­er­al hours be­fore the sit­ting com­mences, in or­der to en­sure that they are fit and prop­er mat­ters to be raised.Ap­pli­ca­tions to the Speak­er to ad­dress im­por­tant mat­ters would now have to be dealt with on the day be­fore, which would ex­clude ur­gent mat­ters that arise on a sit­ting day.Fi­nal prepa­ra­tion for de­bates will have to be done the day be­fore, rather than in the morn­ing pe­ri­od and all com­mit­tee meet­ings on sit­ting days would be can­celled.This is just a brief sum­ma­ry of some rea­sons as to why the sug­ges­tion is im­prac­ti­cal and there are sev­er­al more rea­sons that have to do with al­low­ing ad­e­quate time for prepa­ra­tion for sit­tings on the part of the Par­lia­ment it­self.Fi­nal­ly, whether sit­tings start at 8 am or 1 pm, the length of time to de­bate leg­is­la­tion will re­main the same, and if the Par­lia­ment ac­tu­al­ly ran from 8 to 4 or even from 9 to 3, as the High Court does, it would take more than one week to com­plete the de­bate on a Bill, which would be gross­ly in­ef­fi­cient.

My own view is that rather than start­ing at 8 am, we should re­duce the max­i­mum speak­ing time of MPs from 75 min­utes to 45 min­utes and al­so in­tro­duce "guil­lo­tine" de­bates, where the to­tal amount of time for MPs on both sides to speak is agreed be­fore­hand and lim­it­ed to a rea­son­able amount of time. In that way, sit­tings can be con­clud­ed faster and ear­li­er. That is how this is­sue has been han­dled in oth­er coun­tries.As for MP salaries, the state­ment that our com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages are among the high­est in the Com­mon­wealth is sim­ply in­cor­rect. When all fac­tors are con­sid­ered, es­pe­cial­ly the amount of time that MPs spend on the job, from Mon­day to Sun­day, T&T MPs are among the worst paid in the world.

We all now work at least 40 hours a week on MP du­ties and some of us work even more than that, when week­end func­tions are tak­en in­to ac­count. While oth­ers are in their bed sleep­ing, or at the beach, we are work­ing.

By way of ex­am­ple, the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age of an or­di­nary UK MP is in ex­cess of TT$60,000 per month and back­bench Aus­tralian MPs are paid more than TT$100,000 per month.These is­sues have been stud­ied at length over the years, and have nev­er, in my view, been prop­er­ly tak­en in­to ac­count by the SRC.In par­tic­u­lar, as far as I know, the SRC has not, dur­ing the last 25 years, done a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise to de­ter­mine the du­ties, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, work­load or work­ing hours of MPs, so that re­mu­ner­a­tion can be matched to work­load.The cur­rent salaries and al­lowances take no ac­count of the changed role of an MP in the mod­ern era where per­for­mance and 24/7 ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed or the fact that the pop­u­la­tion now ex­pects MPs to scru­ti­nise and re­view gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and Cab­i­net de­ci­sions and pol­i­cy in de­tail on an on­go­ing ba­sis, in­side and out­side of Par­lia­ment.Lit­tle, if any, ac­count is tak­en the de­mands that con­stituents make on the time of MPs. Sim­ply put, our cur­rent salaries re­view sys­tem is ar­cha­ic and out­dat­ed.With re­spect to the oth­er mat­ters raised in your ed­i­to­r­i­al, such as cam­paign fi­nance re­form, these are mat­ters that war­rant ur­gent and se­ri­ous at­ten­tion.The in­ter­ven­tion of the Pres­i­dent on this is­sue was time­ly and I am cer­tain that cam­paign fi­nance re­form will at­tract bi­par­ti­san sup­port and mean­ing­ful ac­tion will be tak­en in the near fu­ture.

Colm Im­bert

MP