I will be rising on three points of order on this matter and I gave prior notice of this to the Office of the Speaker. Firstly, the report that has just been announced and the relevant Bill cannot be processed because it is in breach of the Rules of this House.
The report is the basis on which four minority parties not represented in the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry can know what happened in that committee and decide how to vote on it today. The report disenfranchised them of this opportunity.
National Rule 251(3)(e) makes it mandatory that a report on a Bill which is not a unanimous report must specify in which respects there was no consensus and expresses any and all views of the minority.
This Rule is one of those that implement and is contemplated in section 55(2)(b) of the Constitution. It enables smaller parties which are not represented in the committee to familiarise themselves with and take a position on the subject matter of the debate. Therefore the breach of Rule 353(1) may constitute an indirect violation of the Constitution.
The IFP gave the committee less than a page of minority views consisting of 15 separate and distinct points, all of which were relevant and material to the Bill, for the committee to redraft and incorporate as it wished. After a long deliberation, the ANC in the committee decided what it liked to insert and what it chose to insert because it did not ...