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Friday, July 11, 2025

Question time for PM proposed

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20131214

Among re­vi­sions pro­posed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives' Stand­ing Or­ders are a rec­om­men­da­tion for a Prime Min­is­ter's Ques­tion Time, dur­ing which ques­tions may be put to the PM about mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance, or on the gen­er­al per­for­mance of the Gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.Prime Min­is­ter's Ques­tion Time is pro­posed for a time des­ig­nat­ed on the House agen­da dur­ing the sec­ond sit­ting of each month.

The PM's Ques­tion Time is not to ex­ceed 30 min­utes and ques­tion to the PM should not ex­ceed 15 sec­onds in length, must be asked "with­out ar­gu­ment or opin­ion and shall not ad­dress more than one mat­ter of gen­er­al gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy."An­oth­er pro­pos­al is to trim MPs' speak­ing time from the cur­rent to­tal of 75 min­utes to a to­tal of 40 min­utes.Cur­rent­ly, MPs in the Low­er House can speak for 45 min­utes with a 30-minute ex­ten­sion.

The re­port sug­gests that the mover of a mo­tion or an MP who pi­lots a bill should be able to speak for 40 min­utes and the first three MPs speak­ing on bills on each bench will al­so speak for 40 min­utes.Oth­er MPs will speak for 30 min­utes with a ten-minute ex­ten­sion if nec­es­sary.Pre­sen­ta­tion of the an­nu­al bud­get, how­ev­er, re­mains at an "un­spec­i­fied" pe­ri­od both for the pre­sen­ter and the Op­po­si­tion's re­sponse. Oth­er MPs will have 45 min­utes plus a ten-minute ex­ten­sion to speak on a bud­get.

Ques­tion for min­is­ters

It al­so pro­posed par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees on top­ics in­clud­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and ap­pro­pri­a­tion and on gov­ern­ment as­sur­ances. The lat­ter will scru­ti­nise as­sur­ances, promis­es and un­der­tak­ings giv­en by min­is­ters on the floor of the House and re­port on the ex­tent to which these have been im­ple­ment­ed and whether this was done in the min­i­mum time nec­es­sary for the pur­pose.

A 15-minute pe­ri­od for ur­gent ques­tions is al­so pro­posed. Ques­tions would have to be sub­mit­ted to the Clerk of the House in ad­vance. The Speak­er must ap­prove if the ques­tion re­lates to a mat­ter which is ur­gent and has arisen sud­den­ly and he con­sid­ers to re­quire im­me­di­ate re­spons­es in the pub­lic in­ter­est.A min­is­ter would be al­lowed to de­cline to an­swer, if, in his opin­ion, pub­li­ca­tion of the an­swer would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

An­oth­er pro­pos­al calls for an­swers to ques­tions on the agen­da to be de­ferred once on­ly for a max­i­mum pe­ri­od of 14 days. Cur­rent­ly, such ques­tions can be de­ferred re­peat­ed­ly and for longer than two weeks.If the query re­mains unan­swered at the end of the 14 days, the MP who asks the ques­tion may ask the Speak­er to write to the min­is­ter con­cerned seek­ing rea­sons for the de­lays in an­swer­ing.

An­oth­er pro­pos­al in­volves al­low­ing an MP from any par­ty in Op­po­si­tion to the Gov­ern­ment to pose ques­tions on any state­ment de­liv­ered by a min­is­ter. If the min­is­ter can an­swer, he shall re­ply. The ques­tion must be no more than 15 sec­onds in length and should not ad­dress more than one mat­ter of gen­er­al gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. The re­ply will be lim­it­ed to two min­utes.

The re­port al­so states that be­fore par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­sid­er­a­tion of any item of busi­ness in the House in which an MP has a fi­nan­cial in­ter­est, the MP should dis­close the ex­tent of that in­ter­est.An­oth­er pro­pos­als bans the use of Par­lia­ment ex­cerpts by po­lit­i­cal par­ty ad­ver­tis­ing or elec­tion cam­paigns, satire or ridicule or com­mer­cial ad­ver­tis­ing.The re­vi­sions are con­tained in the re­port of the Stand­ing Or­ders Com­mit­tee, pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

House leader Roodal Mooni­lal, who laid the re­port, said work on the is­sue had been on­go­ing for years through var­i­ous Par­lia­ments.The com­mit­tee com­prised Speak­er Wade Mark, Mooni­lal, PNM MP Colm Im­bert, PNM whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald plus PP's Collin Par­tap, Jairam Seemu­n­gal and Del­mon Bak­er.


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