Finance Standing Committee Legacy report

Meeting report

Finance Standing Committee Legacy report

The Chairperson welcomed everyone and indicated the Committee had up to the following week to adopt its legacy report, and the draft had been sent to Members for their perusal. He took the Committee through the report page by page. The key issues were that the Committee had a massive oversight and legislative load over the past five years. The Committee strongly suggested that the incoming Committee consider the need to split the Standing Committee on Finance into two committees; one that focuses on legislation and the other one on the Budget and oversight. This would need to be negotiated with the parliamentary authorities. He pointed out that a lot of work gets done offline and it was not fair that the Committee had so much to do as compared to other committees.  

Mr A Lees (DA) expressed support of the proposal. He added that perhaps there should not be one committee dealing with legislation and the other with oversight, but it could be a mix.

The Chairperson agreed and added it should not matter how such allocation of roles is done. The said proposal as espoused in the report would be amended to say there should be consideration of some such division.

Mr N Nhleko (ANC) suggested that there be an addition of a chapter that would speak to what the Committee makes of the issues as identified in the rest of the report. For instance where the Committee expresses an opinion on the need for accountability, transparency and the need to address governance challenges on the part of government departments, officials, and other structural mechanisms, the addition of a brief analysis would then essentially give a full overview. Something had to be said about the Committee’s five year experience and it should be contextualised with such an analysis.

Ms N Ntantiso (ANC) proposed the addition of a brief paragraph that would speak to Committee membership overtime; particularly with reference to the constant changes which took place. Also, the Committee should lay much emphasis on the need for consequence management on a broader scale.

The Chairperson said having a section as suggested by Mr Nhleko could be considered, but upon review of the report in its entirety; this is what had been done. Most of the said analysis was done in the Committee’s Financial Sector Transformation Report. What the Committee could do beyond that was to add a half pager. On membership of the Committee, it was correct to say the Committee should have a stable membership as it deals with Budget matters. It was also correct that the Committee should be more emphatic in its call for consequence management across the board. On minutes of meetings, it should be noted that the Committee did not get to process them regularly. The Committee urged the incoming Committee to do better in processing minutes.

Mr Nhleko said in future the Committee had to be mindful of the need to process minutes timeously. Conventionally, if a body sits, the first thing it does is consideration and approval of minutes of the previous meeting. That was how an institutional record is established. The danger of adopting minutes months later was that even people that were present might not be able to fully recollect what the deliberations were about. This was an administrative matter that had to be attended to.

The Chairperson appreciated the inputs and asked if Members would want to meet again for adoption of the report or would be agreeable with having the Committee secretaries and himself effecting the amendments as suggested then sending the final version for their perusal.

Members were agreeable to the proposal.

The Chairperson indicated he would send the final version of the legacy report to Members after effecting the amendments with the help of Committee staff. He thanked everyone and adjourned the meeting.