Airline briefings could be held in closed session

The finance committee has agreed to explore the possibility of holding parts of briefings by state-owned airline South African Airways (SAA) in closed session when the matters under discussion are market sensitive.

This could affect the briefing that SAA is due to present late next week.

Holding parliamentary meetings behind closed doors is highly controversial and is closely regulated by the rules of Parliament.

The Constitution also stipulates that parliamentary committee meetings cannot be closed in an open and democratic society, unless it is reasonable and justifiable to do so.

Parliamentary legal adviser Frank Jenkins told the committee on Thursday that SAA matters would legitimately fall within the rules of Parliament.

The rules require that an application be made to the Office of the Speaker for a committee meeting to be closed.

Committee chairman Yunus Carrim emphasised that if the committee decided the matters raised in the closed meeting were not market sensitive, then the documents presented to the committee would be disclosed to the media.

A resolution on holding closed meetings will be adopted on Tuesday.

Carrim said the committee was acutely aware of how competitive the airline industry was.

He said it was not fair to expect SAA to report on marketsensitive issues in the public domain, which would serve to the advantage of its competitors.

On the other hand, the stateowned airline was a public company and was required to account to Parliament.

DA finance spokesman David Maynier is opposed to the adoption of the resolution.

SAA executives have argued that information regarding restructuring and strategic plans should be kept confidential.

There was a controversy earlier in May when acting chairwoman Thandi Tobias terminated a committee meeting on SAA’s fourth-quarter results pending the determination of whether the committee had decided to hold this meeting behind closed doors.

The DA was adamant that no such decision had been taken and that none of the information in the fourth quarterly report was market sensitive.