House Speaker Sir Alden McLaughlin says he will be pressing forward with efforts to modernise the Parliamentary Standing Orders which were penned in 1976.
“Some of [the provisions] are archaic and really not relevant to the way things need to operate here,” McLaughlin, in a recent interview with the Cayman Compass, said, as he made his case for updating the Standing Orders.
He said it has been a “challenge” for the last 20 years to “draft, agree and adopt a set of modern standing orders”.
The Standing Orders, which still reference the Legislative Assembly in its wording, governs how the Parliament operates.
“The Cayman Islands Constitution has moved forward leaps and bounds, and so a lot of the provisions in the old standing orders relate to constitutions where elected members had much less control over the destiny of the country. We need to get them in line,” he said.
Aim to modernise
McLaughlin said during his tenure as premier he tried to initiate the process to update the Standing Orders but it was not done.
Now, as Speaker, he said he will begin efforts to have the provisions of the Standing Orders brought in line with the Constitution.
McLaughlin pointed out that the Standing Orders were drafted before the “marvels of email and the other means of communicating quickly” and the review can address this.
“All of these long notice periods and all of these hurdles you have to go through to get a motion before the House, a lot of those things can be short-circuited and make the whole business of legislating and governing much more efficient,” he said.
McLaughlin said the House is now fully autonomous with the control of the administrative operations having been transferred from the deputy governor to the Parliament Management Council.
The council, which is chaired by the Speaker, was an entity also created under McLaughlin’s Progressives-led administration when the legislation to modernise the then Legislative Assembly was completed.
McLaughlin said over the present electoral term the council has not been able to function as effectively as it should.
“This term has seen so much upheaval and there’s been such fractiousness within the government itself, it has affected the Parliament Management Council because the [council] is made up of the speaker, the premier, a number of ministers and members from the opposition, and even being able to get a quorum had been a challenge,” he said.
However, he said he hopes that things will settle down and that the council can start to look at “how we can better manage the affairs of the Parliament”.
Regular meetings
He said also high on his agenda is meeting with Premier Juliana O’Connor-Connolly to get a regular schedule of Parliamentary meetings set for 2024.
Last month, Auditor General Sue Winspear issued a renewed call for creating a set schedule of parliamentary meetings.
Winspear said parliamentary sittings were an important tool for good governance and transparency.
McLaughlin shared the sentiment, saying that for the first time in his 23-year political career he has seen the House meet “so infrequently and for such short periods” under the tenure of previous Premier Wayne Panton.
“It really doesn’t bode well for good governance if the elected members of the country do not regularly have an opportunity to scrutinise, to question what it is the government is doing and to be able to put forward by way of motions proposals which it thinks the government ought to take on board. I hope that we can restore that aspect of good governance during the balance of this term,” he said.
McLaughlin added he is hoping that he can discuss this with the premier early in the new year.
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