Integrity legislation gets green light from Lower House

Integrity in Public Life Bill has been passed in the Lower House of Parliament again. The revamped legislation, which was amended after its predecessor was defeated in the Senate in 2020, got the unanimous support of the 24 Members of Parliament who were present when the vote was taken on Friday night. Moments before, Prime Minister Mia Mottley said the bill had been a long time coming, replacing legislation that was almost 100 years old. Speaking on the concerns expressed by parliamentarians that due to the requirement for persons in public life to declare not only their personal assets but those of some relatives, there might be a drop in the number of persons willing to serve on boards and other bodies, Mottley stressed that there will be a periodic review to see how the system is working. “I’ve been very clear to the Cabinet that there must be a review every three years because the country must be able to govern itself and if you don’t have people coming forward willing and able, equal to the task of governance, then the state of Barbados will become debilitated and incapable of delivering the results that we needed to deliver for our people,” she said. “We understand the risk, but we say that we are prepared to take it, conscious that there must be a review periodically to ensure that we are not scoring an own goal in the end, but conscious that we are in a far better position to fight corruption given the other substantive pieces of legislation…that allow us to be able to be more laser-like in the fight against corruption and which has as its ally, the institutional development, for the first time in this nation’s history, of an anti-corruption unit that we are building now,” the Prime Minister added. Insisting that the Government was not engaging in “tokenism” by putting these measures in place, Mottley said that every dollar taken away from corruption could be put to better use, including assisting the most vulnerable in society. (JB)]]>