Q & Nay: Questions vetting in the Fifth Parliament Introduction Section 92 of the Constitution stipulates that members of Cabinet are collectively and individually accountable to Parliament for the exercise of their powers and the performance of their functions. Oral and written questions to the President, the Deputy President and Cabinet Ministers on these matters are a crucial parliamentary mechanism that is meant to ensure this accountability. In principle, Members of Parliament (MPs) submit questions by certain deadlines for reply through a transparent process facilitated by Parliament’s Questions Office. In practice, however, the process has increasingly been abused by this office to protect the Executive.

The Questions Office The Questions Office’ primary purpose is to process written and oral question submissions from MPs to members of the Executive. According to Chapter 13 of the National Assembly Guide to Procedure (The Guide), Questions to the Executive, the object of questions is to 1. obtain information; and 2. press for action. Questions placed on the Question Paper are required to conform to a series of standing conventions, set out in the Guide to Procedure. For example, a question may only have five subsections and fifteen parts; and questions may not contain opinion. Questions may therefore be edited by the Questions Office as a delegation of the Secretary’s powers. In practice the DA has regularly had cause to dispute proposed edits by the Questions office as we believe that in many instances they have overstepped their mandate. Importantly, there are no rules for question edits, but instead guidelines. Often these guidelines are subject to interpretation and thus in many instances we have successfully fought to have our Questions published in the form that they were submitted. The most important point being that Parliament needs to revisit the current practices of the Questions office and indeed whether the interests of oversight and accountability are being furthered or hampered by certain practices.

Vetting A practice has emerged which we do not agree with – that is the sending of questions in advance of being published to Departments. This is called ‘advance notice’ and is seemingly done on the premise that Departments can give advice on mandate etc. However this is in fact a veil for vetting of questions as we have seen in numerous instances in recent months. The procedural officers of the NA Table who make up the Questions office are supposed to be technical experts on the guide and on the mandates of Departments. In most instances they are and in practice we have found interactions with the editors themselves to be very positive. However what seems to have happened is that the Questions office does not have enough capacity to properly do all aspects of their job.

The Questions Office has thus used this advance notice to rely on government departments to advise them on departmental areas of competency, leaving the mechanism open to manipulation by the executive; which cannot be allowed to continue. In many instances, the Questions Office has allowed government Departments to propose substantive edits to questions before they are published, which is unacceptable. This means that during the editing phase departments are being provided a ‘preview’ of questions which allows them to vet and edit them. This practice compromises Parliaments oversight capacity, and is a violation of the separation of powers between Parliament and the Executive. The Democratic Alliance (DA) Research Office, which regularly interacts with the Questions Office, has independently identified and documented numerous instances where the Questions Office has sent the Executive advance notice of questions from both the National Assembly (NA) and National Council of Provinces (NCOP). We have compiled and collated annexures that provide vivid evidence of this practice and the hampering impact it has on MPs’ ability to fulfil their oversight function. In several instances departments argue that the submitted question does not fall within their mandate. Then without proof, simply on the Departments’ word, the Questions Office advises the asking MP that their questions will be terminated or transferred to another department unless the MP provides proof that they have submitted their question to the correct department. This is biased and deliberate practice that places the burden of proof on MPs. More than this, it allows the Executive a tacit right to amend and change questions which are being posed to them before those questions are published. We have challenged these requests and had departments later acquiesce that they do in fact have involvement, oversight or mandate on the issue. Many times the Departments in fact use the argument of mandate to avoid answering questions or even having them published. We have also raised concerns surrounding certain editorial practices within the Questions Office. Editors often argue that changes are being proposed to ensure continuity or clarity of questions, but in fact the edits substantively alter the tone and intent of the questions and often negatively impact on the MP’s intended purpose behind the question. In practice edits are meant to be ‘signed off’ by MPs but frequently the Questions Office relies on the DA’s researchers to pick up the changes when they are emailed for translation and consideration during the editing process. This is unacceptable. While it is important to ensure that The Guide is upheld, none of these are hard and fast rules. Importantly, the Questions Office should be operating in a way that enhances the oversight function of MPs through the questions mechanism and does not impede it as is regularly the case at present.

Another problematic occurrence which has become standard practice in the Fifth Parliament is an insistence that MPs provide copies of any document that is referred to in a question before it is permitted to be published. This essentially assumes that the MP is lying and places unnecessary onus to produce the referenced material on them. Again this speaks to a tendency of the Questions Office to support the Executive over Parliamentarians in the editing process. It also speaks to a reliance on party staff to provide information which the editors could and in fact used to check themselves. This talks to a previous point in that the DA believes that the Questions Office is under staffed and as a result has started to implement practices which negatively impact the work of MPs.

Conclusion Cabinet accountability through the questions process relies heavily on MPs receiving comprehensive replies that are provided punctually. Inadequate, screened and late answers only compromise Parliament’s efforts to assess the performance of Cabinet Ministers and their departments. The Questions Office should be experts on The Guide and should be a fully capacitated office which works to enhance the oversight function of Parliament and its members so that we can hold the Executive to account. The Guide was never intended to be used as a mechanism to manipulate – or rather, impede – Parliament’s oversight role and the vetting of members’ questions is simply unacceptable. Questions should be published and if the MP has submitted it to the wrong Department, the Department should explain in their response to the question. The DA will submit this document as well as copies of the annexures we have collated to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, House Chairperson, Thoko Didiza, and the Secretary of Parliament, Gengezi Mgidlana, and request a formal meeting and full investigation into these unscrupulous practices.