THE parliamentary Opposition has signalled its intent to take advantage of the provisions in the standing orders of the House of Representatives which provide for questions to be asked of and answered by the prime minister and ministers of Government on their feet in Parliament.

Leader of Opposition business in the House of Representatives Phillip Paulwell gave notice on Wednesday that, as of next month, the intent is to utilise provisions where the prime minister answers questions on the second Tuesday of each month, as well as for minister’s question time at which matters of urgent national importance can be addressed.

He said this enables ministers to answer questions on their feet, avoiding the issue of deputisation, such as which arose on Tuesday, when information minister Robert Morgan was assigned to respond to questions which have been before the House for several weeks on behalf of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

The questions, tabled by Member of Parliament for St Andrew South Eastern Julian Robinson concerned funding for Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Kamina Johnson Smith’s failed campaign for the position of Commonwealth secretary general in July.

Jamaica House issued a release on August 8 outlining how the Government spent $44 million on the campaign and the delegation which accompanied her to Kigali, Rwanda, for the run-off, but Robinson and the Opposition had insisted that Holness was still obligated to respond in Parliament as the parliamentary process could not be subverted.

Paulwell indicated the Opposition’s intent to use the standing orders to get answers on the spot after Speaker Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert insisted that Robinson had agreed to Morgan answering the questions by virtue of the fact that he had asked for copies of the response, and had declined to take either the option to withdraw or postpone the answering of the questions.

Robinson insisted that he gave no indication that he accepted the response coming from Morgan in the stead of Prime Minister Holness:

“The records must accurately record what took place. I made it very clear to you that I did not agree with your ruling — but in this Parliament, your ruling is final. The fact that I asked the member for copies [of the answers] doesn’t mean that I agreed that he should answer the questions. You made a ruling that he was going to answer the questions, and he got up to answer, and I said where are the copies. So you cannot use me asking for the copies to mean that I gave consent for him to answer instead of the prime minister.”

He had indicated on Tuesday that he believed the procedure and Dalrymple-Philibert’s ruling were wrong, but pointed out at the same time that Parliament had waited weeks for the answers.

Dalrymple-Philibert argued that there was nothing wrong with the procedure taken on Tuesday, but that after discussions with Opposition Leader Mark Golding it was agreed that a meeting of the standing orders committee is to be convened to examine the provisions as it relates to a minister responding to questions on behalf of another minister.

“But the ruling that was given yesterday was based on the acceptance of the member in whose name the questions stood — he asked for the answers, he received them, and therefore the questions were properly answered. I stand firmly by the ruling…I asked him three times would he withdraw or postpone, and he chose not to exercise any of those options, the minister stood up and he received them [the answers] and that signals to anybody that he had accepted it,” she argued.

At the same time, the speaker pointed out that the standing orders was silent on whether or not a minister can depute answers to questions to another minister.