MPs must seek approval before leaving House

Jan. 2011
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah

THE Speaker of Parliament, Mrs Joyce Bamford-Addo, today ruled that Members of Parliament (MPs) should seek and obtain permission before leaving the House to perform other duties outside the chamber.
The matter arose when the Chairman of the Health Committee of the House, Alhaji Muntaka Mohammed Mubarak, informed the speaker that although members of the committee were outside the chamber on Tuesday and Wednesday attending a committee sitting, they had all be marked absent.
He argued that since the members were outside the House to consider bills referred to them by the Speaker, they should be marked for being absent with permission.
But before the Speaker could give a reply to the request of the MP, the majority leader informed the House that he was aware of the meeting of the committee since members were not granted permission.
“Madam Speaker, even though the Chairman of the committee informed me about the meeting, I told him to re-arrange the meeting due to the workload on the floor of the House, but he did not heed to my advice,” he said.
Although some MPs argued that by convention they did not need a reply once they had written for permission to perform duties outside Parliament, Mr Avoka explained that individual requests should not be confused with committee requests since committee requests to work outside the chamber had financial implications.
When he caught the eye of the Speaker, the Minority Leader, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, quoted aspects of Standing Order 15 and 16 of the House and said that although individual MPs and committees were required to seek and obtain permission, committees and individual MPs to proceed on their missions once a request had been made.
He explained that it was only the Speaker who could grant permission to committees and individual MPs to perform parliamentary business outside the House, arguing that “that power does not lie in the bosom of neither the majority leader nor the minority leader”.
In the ensuing debate, Alhaji Muntaka explained that it was not entirely true that he trampled on the advice of the majority leader for the health committee to sit outside the House to consider the bills referred to it by the Speaker.
He stated that although he tried to see Mr Avoka last Friday for the matter to be concluded before he embarked on the mission, it was not possible for him to see the leader and that since arrangements had already been made, it was impossible to have abandoned the meeting.
In her ruling, Mrs Bamford-Addo said it was important for both committees and individual MPs who put in a request to perform duties outside the Chamber to wait until they had been granted permission before they leave.