GOVERNMENT will soon be tabling a bill in Parliament to cut the pension for prime ministers, which the House of Representatives approved in December 2005, from 100 per cent to two thirds of the salary of the prime ministers.

A report to Cabinet on Monday from Attorney General and Minister of Justice Senator Dorothy Lightbourne, said that the bill was among a number of legislative matters being given priority attention by a legislation sub-committee of the Cabinet.

Her report noted that the amendment to the Pensions (Prime Minister’s) Act being contemplated would “revert the pensions of prime ministers applicable to present and future prime ministers after they leave office to be two thirds of their salary.”

Senator Lightbourne said the pieces of legislation being given priority by the sub-committee were those which would bring into effect commitments made by the new government in the run-up to the September 3 general election.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, at a political meeting in July, criticised former Prime Minister P J Patterson for supporting the passage of the legislation in the House of Representatives, and promised that a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government would roll back the increase.

Golding had also opposed the move when the House voted strictly along party lines in support of the increase on November 29, 2005. The vote was 28-21 in favour of the bill piloted by the former minister of finance and planning, Dr Omar Davies.

Davies pointed out then that although the House was approving the measures for the first time, they had been implemented from 1992, based on a Cabinet decision intended to place retired prime ministers on the same footing as retired governors general.

He suggested that the matter should not have been controversial, “as the position of prime minister deserves to be treated with no less respect and recognition than that of the governor general.

But Golding, who was then leader of the opposition, was not only angered by the fact that the increases were being approved by Parliament 13 years after being implemented, but suggested that the government was going “overboard”.

He also asked that the government bring a bill to Parliament to validate the payments made prior to the House’s approval.

The 2005 amendments allowed for the pension of a retired prime minister to be the full salary of the current prime minister. It also included provisions benefiting the prime ministers’ spouses, widows and children.