3rd Quarter spending patterns on Conditional Grants: HIV/AIDS Care, Hospital Revitalization; Forensic Pathology; HIV/AIDS Life Skills Education; Community Libraries; Devolution of Property Rate Funds; Appropriation Bill: voting

Meeting report

Committee Report on Appropriation Bill [B3-2010]: consideration and adoption
The Committee Report on the Appropriation Bill was considered page by page by the Committee. The Select Committee followed the format used by the National Assembly Committee in their report. After minor technical amendments to the Committee Report, Mr Mashile moved for the adoption of the report.

Mr T Harris (DA, Western Cape) asked whether a Member who had been absent from the meeting where then the report was tabled was allowed to move or second a motion for the adoption of the report.

Mr D Bloem (COPE, Free State) submitted that it was correct for Mr Mashile to move for the adoption of the report because he was present at the meeting, that is, the current meeting where the report was being considered.

The Committee adopted the report with amendments.

Committee Report on 3^rd quarter conditional grants spending patterns on HIV/AIDS Life Skills Education 2009/10:  consideration and adoption
The Committee Report was put for consideration and adoption by the Committee, page by page.

Mr B Mashile (ANC, Mpumalanga) proposed that they should not mention in the report that the meeting had been held at the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town. He suggested some spelling and grammatical changes be made.

The Chairperson asked for clarity from the Committee about the mentioning of the names of Members who were present in meetings on the Committee Report. There had been a view that names were to be captured in the minutes only and not in the report. If that was correct then it meant that reference to the names of Members in the report had to be removed.

Mr Bloem agreed that it was correct for the minutes to reflect the names of the Members. However it was not proper to do so in a public report.

Mr Harris submitted that a report had to contain as much information as possible and it was totally appropriate for the Members present to be listed in the report. He also thought that if the Committee held a meeting at a particular venue then this had to be reflected in the report as well regardless of how the Committee thought it would be viewed by the public.

Mr Mashile clarified that his proposal on the venue was that it was unnecessary because they would then always have to indicate the venue even for meetings held in Parliament. He submitted that he had no problems with the names of Members appearing in the report as this would enable people to understand the context of the report in terms of the people involved in generating the report.

Mr J Gunda (ID, Northern Cape) supported the submission by Mr Bloem. If the report was going to be made public then people had to read the contents and the identity of the Members was not important. It was important to be consistent so that what was done by the Finance Committee was also practiced by the Appropriations Committee.

The Chairperson said that most of the reports that were tabled before the House seemed not to indicate the names of the people who were present at the consideration and adoption of the report. Their names would be contained in the Committee’s minutes but not in the report. This was simply a report that they would adopt for tabling in the House and they would still have the minutes to fall back on. For consistency sake they should leave out the portion dealing with names and let that reside in the minutes.

The Committee adopted the report with amendments

Committee Report on 3^rd quarter conditional grants spending patterns on HIV and AIDS, hospital revitalisation and forensic pathology 2009/10:  consideration and adoption
The Committee adopted the report with minor amendments

Committee Report on 3^rd quarter conditional grants spending patterns on community library services 2009/10:  consideration and adoption
The Committee adopted the report with minor amendments.

Committee Report on 3^rd quarter conditional grants spending patterns on devolution of property rate funds 2009/10:  consideration and adoption
The Committee adopted the report with amendments.

Mr Bloem spoke about the need for accuracy of figures in all the reports. The Committee had been busy with reports dealing with money matters. The reports would go into the public domain and if there were any mistakes in the reports in terms of figures there would be problems. These types of reports had to be distributed in time to allow Members to go through them thoroughly beforehand so that they were prepared when they considered them in the meeting. It was important to protect the Committee’s integrity by making sure that they did not adopt reports merely for the sake of adoption.

The Chairperson thanked Mr Bloem and accepted his advice. He commented that, except for the report on the Appropriation Bill, which had been circulated late, the rest of the reports had been in circulation for two weeks. The Chairperson had requested Members to communicate their corrections immediately upon receiving the reports. It was unfortunate that this was not done by Members. He appealed to Members that when they received reports that they immediately interacted with them and communicated with the Committee’s Secretary so that they would cover a lot of ground before they convened a meeting to adopt the reports. The Committee had been under tremendous pressure in dealing with these budgetary issues.

The Chairperson complained that there was a problem with Members failing to attend meetings. Although it was difficult for smaller parties such as the ID, he could not understand why parties such as COPE and the IFP failed to attend Committee meetings regularly. It was important for Members to be consistent in their attendance of meetings.

The meeting was adjourned.