Progress Being Made to Improve Legislative Process

Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Hon. Marlene Malahoo Forte, says progress is being made in improving the Government’s legislative process.

Speaking in the House of Representatives on December 6, she noted that all ministries have established Legislative Teams and that her Ministry has started working with them.

The Minister informed that the inaugural meeting with the Legislative Teams was convened on September 9, to enable the Ministry to, among other things, meet the respective officers and provide details on the new arrangements.

“My Ministry has gone further to convene meetings with the Permanent Secretaries and Legislative Teams of each ministry to review the progress of priority legislation encompassed in the 2022/2023 programme and the Throne Speech, to discuss strategies to accelerate the pace of reform for outstanding legislation, and we have begun our discussion on the legislative priorities for 2023/2024,” the Minster told the House.

Meetings have been convened with the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministries of Labour and Social Security, Education and Youth, and Science, Energy and Technology.

Mrs. Malahoo Forte said meetings for the other ministries are scheduled over the course of this month.

She further informed that the Ministry now requires priority legislation to include subsidiary legislation, that is the Regulations, and to deal with proposals to increase outdated fines and penalties.

“The criticality of including subsidiary legislation was brought home with the Road Traffic Act and the Road Traffic Regulations, and everyone who has been monitoring that lamented the inordinately long time it took for the regulations to be promulgated after the Road Traffic Act was passed into law,” Mrs. Malahoo Forte said.

The Minister stated that all ministries have been furnished with the pieces of legislation that contain fines and penalties that need to be reviewed, adding that some ministries have already prepared Cabinet submissions.

“A projectised approach has been introduced, which now requires all ministries to work within settled timeframes. An agile, hand-holding approach has also been adopted by my Ministry to ensure that support to the ministries is responsive and effective,” she noted.

Mrs. Malahoo Forte said each piece of legislation being amended or developed, if it is new, is being treated as a project and managed in accordance with established project management principles.

The process involves the development of the project’s scope, schedule, risks, and risk responses.

“Legislative policy development has been identified as one of the major weaknesses in the Government. If the policy is not cogently expressed, this is likely to affect the quality of the related Cabinet Submission and Drafting Instructions to the Chief Parliamentary Counsel,” Mrs. Malahoo Forte pointed out.

With a view to closing this gap, the Minister said her Ministry is seeking to introduce a training programme to build the capacity of officers in this area.

It is projected that this training course will be implemented by the first quarter of the 2023/2024 Financial Year.