Deputy Speaker, Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy does not come cheap." In fact, to quote from his quote, when he said: ``Democracy is probably the most expensive and inefficient form of government - except for all the rest that mankind has ever tried.''
The relevance of this quote is significant when we consider Vote 2, which should fund the critical role of Parliament in our constitutional democracy; more so, since this Vote has been steadily increasing over recent years and will over the MTEF period increase further to approximately R2 billion.
The efficient and effective administration of Parliament, and specifically the capacitation of members and portfolio committees of Parliament, are essential if the institution is to fulfil its critical constitutional mandate. If Parliament is managed and operates effectively, the institution could have a significant impact on the lives of the people who voted us in as their public representatives to make us the people's representatives.
As far as the legislative role of Parliament is concerned, the Constitution is very clear. The founding provision of the Constitution states that obligations imposed on institutions must be fulfilled. Section 44 deals with Parliament's role as the legislative authority. The Speaker has already referred to that.
Section 55 places a clear obligation on the National Assembly to ensure that all executive organs of state in the national sphere are accountable to it, and to maintain oversight of the exercise of national executive authority, including the implementation of legislation. So, therefore, we need to monitor what the executive is doing.
The critical question before us today is: Have we met our constitutional obligation over the past year, and will the budget before us allow us and capacitate us to meet our constitutional obligations in the coming year?
Unfortunately, we have to admit that we do not have adequate resources. As Cope, we express our concern, and we want to echo the sentiments expressed by the hon Smith in this regard, because our committees are not adequately resourced and capacitated to conduct their legislative and oversight work with the necessary knowledgeable, dedicated and duly qualified content advisers and legal advisers.
The fact of the matter is, if Parliament is functioning with nine legal advisers at present, there is no way that the 31 portfolio committees and all other committees that function within Parliament have the necessary legal support. Therefore it is small wonder that such incapacitation has led to situations such as that of the recent Cape High Court ruling on the omission of prescribed penalties for certain serious sexual offences. This while portfolio committee members also rarely have the opportunity to engage with Ministers directly, but have to engage with departmental officials, other than at fancy dinners where they have the opportunity to meet the executive.
Another concern that we want to place on the table is the clogging up of Bills in the National Assembly, which can be directly ascribed to the fact that we do not have the necessary legal services. The clogging up of Bills in the National Assembly presents a challenge to the National Council of Provinces, which ultimately then gives them a timetable problem. As far as keeping government accountable, there is, again, a major problem. Can we truly say that parliamentary activities are aimed at holding government accountable? Is our co-ordination and programming efficient?
Some committees still believe that we have to keep government departments and officials accountable, and don't realise that the Constitution makes it abundantly clear that we have to hold Ministers accountable. Some additional questions that we need to answer as a Parliament are: How many of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts' recommendations are implemented by the various Ministers and their departments? Is there adequate technical support and sufficient capacity for Scopa to fulfil its mandate? Are the reports and recommendations taken seriously by this Parliament and especially by the executive?
Poor programme co-ordination makes it difficult for parties in the opposition to fulfil their duties. Members of Parliament who serve on Scopa often have to excuse themselves to go to other committees. All portfolio committees also have difficulty holding the executive to account and overcoming serious problems, such as when Ministers try to make them their lapdogs and want to make committees extensions of the executive. We cannot allow that as a Parliament. We have to fulfil our constitutional role.
Are we deriving tangible benefits from parliamentary democracy offices and from the "Taking Parliament to the People" programme? As Cope, we have a serious concern in this regard. What impact have those programmes had on our role to ensure executive accountability, while committees do not have enough qualified and knowledgeable content advisers, researchers and legal advisers? In fact, some chairpersons will admit that they have to compile their own committee reports, simply because they do not have adequate support services.
That brings me to members' support. The members' support function needs to be improved significantly. From experience, it takes an extraordinary amount of time to get proper support from this section. This leaves new members often frustrated.
As the third largest party in Parliament, Cope has had a consistent battle to get adequate office space, and we still have not resolved that issue. This is for our support staff and our Members of Parliament. We also have repeatedly called for a fair allocation of parliamentary housing to Cope MPs.
It is common knowledge that parliamentary villages are inhabited by parliamentary and party support staff. Why is Parliament not intervening or engaging with the Department of Public Works and the security services to ensure that MPs receive priority allocation of houses? It must be easy to determine who the people are that reside in the villages. At this stage, we still have a serious problem with that - to this day - three years into the Fourth Parliament.
The establishment of the much-awaited parliamentary budget office is overdue. The main reason for establishing the budget office is, clearly, as a result of the money Bill that was passed. But the fact of the matter is that this is the much-needed technical support that this Parliament requires, so that we can effect the necessary changes to budgets and budget allocations.
In overall terms, the functioning of Parliament needs improvement. The issues range from unanswered parliamentary questions by Ministers - and we are very happy that the Speaker alluded to that -to the nonimplementation of Scopa recommendations by departments, lack of follow-through from Scopa to committees, inadequate training and technical competencies of committee secretaries, and lack of support for members.
We align ourselves as Cope with all parties that object to the current reality that National Treasury is holding the purse strings. They determine the budget allocation to Parliament which, in effect, is strangling our capacity to effectively oversee executive authority. This, as the hon Smith alluded to, is clearly an infringement of the doctrine of separation of powers. [Interjections.]
As Cope, we want to thank the Speaker for his input and we will clearly support him in whatever activity he engages in to improve parliamentary efficiency. Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]