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Date : 27/05/2003
Source: National Council of Provinces (NCOP)
Title: Pandor: Parliamentary Dept Budget Vote 2003/2004, NCOP


ADDRESS BY MRS NALEDI PANDOR, MP, CHAIRPERSON OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF PROVINCES: DEBATE ON VOTE 2 - PARLIAMENT, NCOP, 27 May 2003

The Parliament of South Africa has many distinctive features that set it apart from many world parliaments. For example, Parliament's role, powers and functions enjoy firm constitutional protection.

Moreover, the Constitution makes Parliament the primary democratic institution in South Africa. The people have a voice in their Parliament not only through elected representatives but also through access to its deliberations by their right to speak and make representations in committees. Such public participation assists us in our primary function as representatives of the people. We shape laws, we can amend the constitution, and we monitor, evaluate and encourage the Executive to give attention to issues of concern to the people of South Africa.

One of the most important roles we are assigned is the role of national budget review - a process that is part of our work for at least three months every year.

We have begun to change the way we look at the national budget, primarily through the creation of the Joint Budget Committee. Its formal establishment last year has raised a number of issues. First, it is hoped that in time this committee will be the kernel from which a small professional budget analysis research unit will grow to provide information that enables a thorough independent assessment of budget figures.

Second, we have to make progress towards defining Parliament's powers to amend the budget, so as to fulfil the demands of section 77(2) of the Constitution, which allows us to pass legislation determining the procedure to be followed to amend money bills. This issue sparked much heated debate about five years ago when an initial draft of a Money Bills Amendment Procedure Bill was found unsuitable. The reason for the delay in making further legislative progress is that the redefinition of these amendment powers raises important political questions about the role of Parliament in policy-making. The general feeling is that amendment powers should not be unconditional. We need to encourage more work in this area.

Third, we do not spend enough time on the budget in committees to make a meaningful parliamentary input. Committees should have far more time to consider the budget than the current rules allow. It is vital for Parliament to remain true to the trust the people have given to us. This trust requires us to ensure scrupulously at every point that we engage in our work with certainty of purpose and clarity on approach and process.

We are now in a better position than ever before to understand and contribute to the budget process. The quality of information available to Parliament has improved over the past few years. You only have to look at the redesign of budget documentation and the provision of new information through the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, the Intergovernmental Fiscal Review, and the section 32 expenditure and revenue reports in accordance with the Public Finance Management Act.

Members of the public observing our various budget vote debates each year must surely be asking questions about the link between our debates and the budget that is mentioned in the Order Paper. The majority of speeches tend to be a repetition of policy statements, announcement of new policy ideas, at times untested, and sometimes reflection on achievements. Perhaps Parliament is to blame for having failed to set down clear criteria of areas we wish to see addressed in budget vote debates.

In considering our own Parliamentary budget, it seems as a minimum that the following questions should be part of contributions in the debate:

1. What funds were voted in the financial year under review?
2. Were there any priorities set out as a part of the budget plan?
3. Were these priorities achieved?
4. Were there any unanticipated occurrences that caused expenditure?
5. Are there policy changes that have emerged as a result of the experience in the preceding financial year?

Today's debate offers the NCOP an opportunity to illustrate its perspective on the future shape of budget vote debates.

First, we take it as given that the core policy of Parliament remains intact and that in the course of the debate we will and can indicate new developments and challenges. To begin with, we note that in the financial year 2002/3 Parliament was voted R480.2 million. This allocation was distributed across divisions as follows:

Personnel (R117.5 million), Administrative Expenditure (R97.5 million), Inventories (R7.7 million), Equipment (R7.5 million), Professional Services (R6.2 million), Transfer Payments i.e constituency and party support allowance (R62.6 million), Miscellaneous Payments (R12,8 million), Direct Charge members salaries and pension contribution (R168.1 million)

By the end of the past financial year Parliament had spent R502.7 million. As is clear, we exceeded our allocation by R22.5 million.

The funds voted to Parliament support our activities in a range of areas.

First, there is committee work. As we all know, committees are the engine room of Parliament. They are the primary vehicles for increasing public participation in the legislative process. At present there are 50 parliamentary committees (27 NA, 10 NCOP, 6 Joint, and 7 Ad Hoc); a staff of 131 support their activities; and they work off a budget R12 million. Last year these committees debated and approved 75 Bills (53 s 75, 10 money, 10 s 76, 2 constitutional amendments). They produced and adopted 376 Reports (176 on Bills, 75 on international agreements, and 129 on oversight). They also amended more Bills than ever before, and redrafted six (only one was redrafted in the year 2001) so as to make better law.

We think these are laudable achievements.

There was some disquiet recently (March) when it was discovered that last year's committee budget of R12.6 million had been underspent by R7.4 million. In order to prevent this happening in the future we have introduced performance budgeting that will allow committees to manage their own budgets, an overall budget that has been increased to R14 million in the coming year. Performance budgeting is an improvement on traditional budgeting. It is a system of budgeting that integrates strategic planning, financial planning and performance management. It is a system that enables us to allocate resources in terms of agreed goals. It is a system that enables us to focus on how funds are actually used.

Second, there is the 'Parliament to the People' programme. In October 2002 the NCOP mounted its first 'Parliament to the People' programme in the Eastern Cape province and in March 2003 concluded the financial year with a second 'Parliament to the People' in the North West province. The NCOP believes that this programme, aimed at ensuring that our democracy is linked to the people of our country, has given value for money to the hundreds of people we have reached.

Third and last, Parliament continued its growing interaction with African and other Parliaments. A successful meeting of African Parliaments was held in July 2002 prior to the inaugural summit of the African Union. That meeting gave detailed attention to the challenges associated with establishing a Pan African Parliament and adopted a resolution that was submitted to the Summit of AU heads of state.

We hosted visits from the President of Italy, the Emir of Qatar and the President of the Hellenic Republic. We sent an observer mission to Zimbabwe. Members and POs visited Botswana, Uganda, Namibia, Switzerland, China, Sudan, Japan and Mozambique on Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Inter-Parliamentary Union, and official NCOP visits.

We would have been able to provide better information on members' activities in this regard, if the Secretary's report on Parliament for the year 2002 had been available before this debate.

As we report on these international programmes, it is important to refer briefly to support that Parliament has received from international donors such as the European Union. The EU support programme, involving the sum of R115 million over six years, began in November 1996 and came to an end in May 2003. The aim of the programme was to ensure good governance and stable democracy by strengthening the role of the national and provincial legislatures in fulfilling their constitutional obligations. There were five key-result areas - the improvement of parliamentary infrastructure and services, the improvement of MPs and MPLs parliamentary skills, the improvement in institutional arrangements, improvement in public participation, and improvement in the co-operation between legislatures.

We are pleased to say that Parliament and the EU have begun discussions and processes that should lead to a new support programme.

We are also pleased to say that Parliament and the African Capacity Building Foundation have entered into a support programme that will strengthen the ability of MPs to perform their constitutional functions. It will build a better research capacity, better oversight mechanisms, strengthen committee support, provide training for new MPs in the next Parliament, and build capacity for the parliamentary dimension of the African Union.

There are positive developments in activities planned for the new financial year 2003/4 for which the Parliamentary budget is R627.9 million.

We plan to strengthen committee support and ensure that our committees carry out their work in terms of clear criteria. Some of the areas we have agreed to focus on are as follows.

1. We plan to increase public participation in Parliament
2. We plan to improve the understanding of democracy amongst our people
3. We plan to strengthen the institutional mechanisms for enhancing the ability of members to process legislation from a fully informed and independent perspective
4. We plan to enhance the use of technology in Parliament and especially in the NCOP as an important part of ensuring full provincial participation in national matters
5. We plan to provide additional research support that helps legislatures and the NCOP in identifying the provincial interest more accurately
6. We plan to improve our oversight and accountability capacity
7. We plan to finalise and process the Powers and Privileges of Parliament Bill
8. We plan to improve substantially the financial management of Parliament.

There are further areas of improvement that we believe will contribute to enhancing this House's action on our constitutional mandate. It is our view that our resource use and programme planning would be greatly enhanced by the Executive providing Parliament with an accurate map of legislation for each year.

We are also concerned that an old and inefficient practice, which we had changed, has now been revived, and that is the practice of introducing s 76 Bills in the other House. Last year only two of the ten s 76 Bills were introduced in this House.

It is of course the prerogative of the Executive to decide on which House to favour with introduction. However, if all legislation is placed before one House, delays in processing legislation occur. This leads to Bills tagged as s 76 being transmitted to this House when we do not have time to process them. In such cases (and there are many) the scrutiny and review of laws is rendered inadequate and we pass 'bad' law.

A final area of action is the urgent need to improve executive interaction with the NCOP. Some of you will remember the so-called Lekota incident in 1998 when, as Chair of this House, he ended a debate because a Cabinet Minister failed to attend as promised. Well I am glad to say that there has been some improvement in this regard over the last five years. While there are Ministers who give sustained attention to their work in this House, there are several who appear to hold the view that they have no relationship to this House.

The outline of our progress in the last financial year clearly shows that our democracy has laid a firm foundation for a sustainable democracy. Now that the basic blocks are in place, the task of Parliament is to ensure the selection of appropriate support material to ensure that we do not falter. The hard work of members last year sends a strong signal of our intention to make the NCOP a House of the people, fully responsive to the mandate of supporting South Africans in creating a better life for all.

Issued by the Office of the Chairperson, NCOP

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