Reid under fire
Opposition senators castigate minister for calling parliamentary committee ‘talk shop’
EDUCATION MINISTER Ruel Reid yesterday drew the ire of his Opposition colleagues in the Upper House for calling the process of setting up a joint select committee of Parliament “a talk shop”. His unflattering tag came when he sought to recant on his own proposal of establishing a parliamentary committee to deliberate on the motion of funding tertiary education.
Leader of Government Business in the House Kamina Johnson Smith subsequently sought to clarify the issue by reassuring the parliamentary Opposition that the Government was willing to go with the proposal of establishing a joint select committee to examine the motion, which was moved by Senator Wensworth Skeffery.
Reid rose at the end of the debate to indicate that he had changed his previous position on the setting up of a joint select committee to examine the motion.
According to Reid, “Because we are already advanced – there are several initiatives we are already rolling out to facilitate the expansion of access to tertiary education. We are proposing an amendment to the vehicle – that instead of having a joint select committee of Parliament, we are proposing to have a multi-sectoral committee hosted by the Ministry of Education, that will accelerate the intention of this motion.”
The education minister argued that “parliamentary time is very, very precious, if we want a talk shop ... . ”
However, before Johnson Smith’s intervention, opposition senators took Reid to task for suggesting that a joint select committee was a waste of time.
“A joint select committee of Parliament is not a talk shop; it is an important mechanism established by the Constitution and the Standing Orders of the Parliament,” opposition senator Lambert Brown declared, after rising on a point of order.