Opposition Senator Lambert Brown drew the ire of Education Minister Fayval Williams when he commented that the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) will only “rubber stamp” the decisions of the Professional Practice and Conduct Committee (PPCC) which is responsible for disciplinary matters relating to teachers.

Both entities are to be formalised under the JTC Bill which seeks to establish a governing body for the teaching profession and a licensing and registration regime for all government-paid teachers.

Williams, who is chair of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) examining the JTC Bill, accused Brown, during Thursday’s committee meeting, of being “pejorative and mischievous” in his utterances.

Brown made the comment after Government member Natalie Campbell Rodriques questioned whether the council automatically accepts the PPCC’s decision regarding the fate of a teacher, which Williams affirmed.

“Am I to understand that the council is a rubber stamp for the PPCC?” Brown asked.

Williams responded to say “It feels like we’re going backwards with that question,” arguing that the whole reason for setting up the PPCC is to have a body that will interrogate the facts of a case and come to a decision.

“The council shall accept the decision. There’s an appeal process that we have described in this Act,” she said.

Brown then retorted: “So you are confirming that the council cannot say ‘maybe you came to your decision improperly or anything like that, or your decision is unlawful, and so we ask you to look back at it? In other words, the council has no say, it’s just a rubber stamp.”

Williams then asked Brown to withdraw his comments, stressing again that he is belittling the work of the joint select committee, disregarding “the many, many man hours that have gone into deliberating and deciding.”

Brown said time should not be wasted in requesting a withdrawal of his statement as he strongly holds the view and that it amounts to a rubber stamp, “if the council has no possibility of commenting on the decision and they just have to accept. I stand firm by my decision and I’m sorry I can’t withdraw an opinion, which I hold sincerely and passionately”.

Williams argued that in the labour relations world, once a tribunal makes a decision, the employers are bound to accept “and Member Brown knows that quite well”. She suggested that maybe he should make a decision about whether or not he continues to sit on the JSC, if he insists on belittling the work by talking about it as a rubber stamp”.

Brown then told the minister that “it is not your call as to whether or not I continue to sit on this committee. I was chosen in the Senate to be on this committee. It’s not your call. I stand by my views and its sufficient for me to say I disagree with you on this because if two of whatever number of people sits on a committee and the others are bound to silence, that sounds like a rubber stamp to me,” he said.

During the ensuing heated exchange, other Government members of the committee joined in lashing Brown about his unsavory comments.

Robert Miller said Brown’s choice of words was “unbecoming and we should try our endeavour best to ensure that we do not use those words to really belittle the committee, because we have done a lot of work in the committee…So to use those choice of words is unfortunate and you have not seen it fit to withdraw those statements.”

Brown then asked if saying rubber stamping was unparliamentary. Miller countered to say “you know quite clearly as to what you’re doing, and you are cognizant of that”

Williams quipped: “Very much so. I totally agree with you Member Miller. We are gathered here as members to do serious work, serious deliberation. We have many technical persons here with us who take their jobs seriously, and if after so many weeks of deliberating so many months we get to this point and the council is being categorised in that way, then we have to think that there is something else at play here,” hinting at a political agenda.

Brown insisted that he had no “improper” motive. “I’m simply saying that if a matter goes to the Council, and I’m not categorising the council as a rubber stamp, I’m simply saying, are we saying that every decision, that comes to the council, the council should be mum on it and therefore act as a rubber stamp and it ought not to be,” he said.

Member Natalie Campbell Rodriques insisted that the term rubber stamp is putting a negative spin on what is a systemic process that has been thought through.

“We have deliberated on it and also the drafters I’m sure have done so as well. So I think we need to be careful with the words we use. It’s not rubber stamping; it’s the entity of the council that makes this decision and that’s what the committee is,” she said.

Campbell Rodriquez further argued that it cannot be rubber stamping ” if you empower this entity to do work using processes, systems and personnel that are of the same caliber as the council.”

Kavan Gayle also chipped in, saying that when the decision was made to establish the committee, the objective was to isolate the roles and functions of the JTC and make it distinct.

“The committee would conduct its work and there are rules governing how the committee would conduct its work and report back to the council every decision, providing reasons, and the reasons are outlined and established in the legislation. Now, having done that. I don’t believe we could contend that the council is a mere rubber stamp….I never thought…at this stage of the deliberations, we would be contending that the council as established would be viewed as a mere rubber stamp,” he said.