An overlap with recently passed legislation has stalled the draft Integrity in Public Life bill.
And according to Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, Government has been asked to determine whether it would need that measure as well as the Prevention of Corruption Act which was passed in Parliament last December.
The Prime Minister was responding to a question from the media on legislation regarding integrity as well as freedom of information and of expression.
“There is a school of legal thought that the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act adequately cover most of the issues that would be covered in an Integrity Act,” said Stuart, after he had toured the Barbados Olympic Centre, Wildey, yesterday morning.
“That is an issue on which we need to make a decision, so it really doesn’t matter because the legislation is there already. If we need to pass the integrity bill, we will do that.”
The Prime Minister pointed out that the Prevention of Corruption Act was passed in accordance with the United Nations Convention on Corruption, but the Attorney-General’s Office had pointed out the overlap.
Stuart said when he was Attorney-General, and presided over the governance committee, a freedom of information bill had been drafted.
“That has been with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel for some time. That is on the cards.”
He added that it was also a manifesto promise of the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) on which they were not going to renege.
He said Government went through the bill “line by line and word by word”, but the Chief Parliamentary Counsel was in the process of doing cross-checks.
“Their analysis would be slightly different from ours,” Stuart said.
“Not only are they going to look at the piece of legislation in terms of what it says clause by clause, but they have to satisfy themselves that it does not conflict with other pieces of legislation in the system.
“They do a lot of cross-referencing and so on, so that when the bill comes before Parliament, it is consistent with the Constitution and it is not in conflict with other pieces of legislation related to the public administration of the country.”
In 2008, during the general election campaign, the late Prime Minister David Thompson placed the issue before the public and revealed that?Government had begun to draft legislation.
Integrity legislation has been passed in Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda.