HOA committee sessions could become public in future

House of Assembly (HOA) committee meetings are currently required to be held in private, but Premier Dr Natalio Wheatley has said that there could be future discussions about opening them to the public.

The committee stage of the legislative process is where a detailed examination of the Bill takes place. It usually starts after a Bill’s second reading, and changes are able to be made to the bill at this stage.

Dr Wheatley explained that under the HOA’s existing Standing Orders, committee sessions are not open to the public and can only include House members, staff, and witnesses.

“This is a committee of the House of Assembly. It’s a committee of the whole [house]. Right now in the Standing Orders, committee sessions are held in private,” he said. “You can have witnesses, persons who come and present information to the committee. But that is as far as it goes in committee.”

The Premier added that the rules could be reviewed if members wish to make such sessions open to the public. “Many persons have spoken about making the committee stage public. It even came up in the constitutional debate. There’s a process if we want to put forward an amendment to the Standing Orders,” he explained.

He noted that the Standing Orders were recently amended to allow for papers to be discussed in committee, indicating that procedural changes are possible if members support them. “If persons want to put forward proposals and suggestions to amend the Standing Orders, there’s a process for that,” Dr Wheatley said. “This committee session begins [next] Monday, so this committee session will not be able to be made public because the Standing Orders would have to be amended, and the amendment would take several weeks to take place.”

The Premier said he recognises that public access to committee meetings is a matter worth debating. “In the future, if we want the committee sessions to be public, we would have to amend the Standing Orders. And that’s something that we can discuss. I see advantages and disadvantages to making committee sessions public,” he stated.

He cautioned, however, that opening committee sessions might affect how freely witnesses share information. “You have certain discussions in committee which are privileged and confidential, and you also have witnesses who may not be as forthright and honest if they know that their statements will be made public,” he explained. “But there’s also a case for making the changes to legislation, when you actually read the amendments, public — but not the deliberations.”

The issue of transparency in HOA committees has surfaced before. In 2023, some lawmakers and members of the public called for greater access to committee sessions to improve accountability and trust in legislative processes, though no formal motion has yet been brought to amend the Standing Orders.