Yvonne Ba­boolal

MPs past and present are di­vid­ed on the is­sue of how much speak­ing time they should have.Some agree with the pro­posed changes to the Stand­ing Or­ders of Par­lia­ment, which would cut down the speak­ing time of MPs from 75 min­utes to 40 min­utes, say­ing this would re­duce the amount of time they have to talk fool­ish­ness.Oth­ers, like for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, ap­pear baf­fled as to the ra­tio­nale be­hind the pro­posed changes; charg­ing it was an un­der­hand plot to cut down on the work­ing hours of MPs.

And there are those, like Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, who not­ed that a mo­tion on the mat­ter is yet to be brought be­fore the House and de­bat­ed and, in truth, it may not even be­come a re­al­i­ty. Khan said, as is fit­ting for a well-be­haved pub­lic ser­vant, he did not, and should not, have a per­son­al opin­ion on the mat­ter.For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill, who was a sen­a­tor in the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, said the mat­ter was not a new one."This was some­thing that was un­der re­view for a long time."

Enill agreed the speak­ing time should be cut down."Un­der the cur­rent sys­tem, in the Low­er House an MP has 45 min­utes to talk and an ex­ten­sion of 30 min­utes. In many in­stances, peo­ple spend all their time talk­ing about all kinds of mat­ters ex­cept that which is be­ing de­bat­ed. There are 28 MPs down­stairs and if you mul­ti­ply that by 75 min­utes for one bill, where is it go­ing to lead?" Enill asked. "The changes will help them make more ef­fi­cient use of their time."

Enill said the fact that no­body might be lis­ten­ing to them was of no con­se­quence to MPs, since the main thing was that what they were say­ing was be­ing record­ed by Hansard. He said the speak­ing time would be dif­fer­ent in dif­fer­ent ju­ris­dic­tions be­cause of the dif­fer­ing num­ber of MPs. "In Eng­land, you have 200 or 300 MPs, for in­stance," he said.Don­na Cox, MP for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, read­i­ly agreed that the speak­ing time should be cut down.

"I am one who al­ways felt the speak­ing time was too long. You have peo­ple speak­ing ir­rel­e­vant things and we have to be there un­til two or three in the morn­ing to lis­ten to them," Cox said. "I think in half an hour, with a ten-minute ex­ten­sion, you should be able to say a lot. Be­cause many times peo­ple have too much time for pi­cong and ole talk. If they know they have a stip­u­lat­ed time, they will get to the point and would not have the time to say things ir­rel­e­vant to the bill."

Pan­day, how­ev­er, felt the cause of the prob­lem need­ed ex­am­in­ing. "Why do they want to cut down on the speak­ing time? They meet once a week, and not every Fri­day ei­ther. They are try­ing to hold less Par­lia­ment and have less talk."Pan­day said the very name Par­lia­ment means to talk.

"Par­lia­ment is de­rived from a French ex­pres­sion which means to talk. The pur­pose of Par­lia­ment is to talk out your dif­fer­ences in­stead of killing each oth­er. Par­lia­ment should meet every day," Pan­day said. "So what's the prob­lem? Are they ir­rel­e­vant? There are stand­ing or­ders to deal with that. If it's be­cause they are talk­ing fool­ish­ness, they will on­ly talk less fool­ish­ness."

Pan­day said: "I think it's a re­ac­tion to my call for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. They are try­ing to hood­wink the peo­ple by say­ing we have re­formed the stand­ing or­ders."Khan not­ed there were ex­ist­ing stand­ing or­ders to deal with MPs who are ir­rel­e­vant, te­dious or repet­i­tive.

He said: "The Speak­er could di­rect him to take his seat and cut his speak­ing time.""I go ac­cord­ing to what the sys­tem says."

The Stand­ing Or­ders Com­mit­tee re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly and the Gov­ern­ment plans to have the House de­bate it ear­ly next year.