Opposition Leader Raises Concerns Over Lack of Scrutiny on Key Ministries in Appropriation Bill Debate

Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne is concerned that some key Government ministries have so far not been scrutinised during debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2024, in the House of Assembly.

However, Leader of Government Business, Deputy Minister Santia Bradshaw, said she took “umbrage at the insinuation that we are trying to stop certain heads from coming when on previous occasions these heads have actually been properly ventilated in previous sessions of Parliament.”

Their difference of opinion occurred yesterday after Thorne tried to ask Minister of Health, The Most Honourable Senator Jerome Walcott, about Government’s expenditures in relation to travel, and what the Opposition Leader called an “unprecedented large number of consultants” employed by Government.

After Chairman of Committees Peter Phillips told Thorne the question “has nothing to do with the Ministry of Health,” Thorne, the Christ Church South Member of Parliament, said he did not “know why they brought this minister [Walcott] to expose him to public scrutiny and not other ministries.

“I was told that certain other ministries would be here, and they have disappeared, they have fallen out of sight. The public has been asking what happened to certain ministries. Why can’t these ministries be brought into this place to give account? Certainly, the Ministry of Transport and Works has been one, the Ministry of Housing has been one,” he said. (SC)