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No House: Burt angling from weekly sittings

The House of Assembly will not sit today — the second occasion this month there have not been proceedings.

It was unclear if sittings every two weeks will become normal practice.

ZBM News reported this week that David Burt, the Premier, had “defended the Government’s decision to hold meetings of the House of Assembly on every other Friday, instead of weekly, as has been the tradition”.

The news story included an on-camera interview with Mr Burt. He said: “A lot of work that is done in Government does not require us to come up here and amend laws.

“It’s change the policy, it’s change the process, it’s making sure that things get done on the execution side.”

Mr Burt said that a “raft of legislation” would be tackled when MPs convened next Friday.

He added that in other Overseas Territories the legislatures met once a month.

Questions sent to the Government about the issue included whether a decision had been made to hold meetings of the House of Assembly every two weeks and, if so, when the decision was made, and who it was made by.

One government spokeswoman said that the questions were “best answered by the Speaker”, Dennis Lister.

Mr Lister directed questions about the scheduling of sittings back to the Government yesterday.

Another government spokeswoman said that the questions should be answered by Shernette Wolffe, the Clerk to the Legislature.

Ms Wolffe said that she did not have time to discuss the matter. The calendar on the Bermuda Parliament website yesterday did not show any meetings of the House of Assembly scheduled for July.

Dates for Senate sessions, committee meetings and Youth Parliament sessions were also not listed.