United Bermuda Party (UBP) senators were fuming after being granted only minutes to debate the Health Ministry in yesterday's budget session.

But Government Senator Calvin Smith said the Opposition was to blame as it was their choice to spend only two-and-a-half hours on the matter.

Sen. Smith spent nearly all of yesterday morning's session explaining what the Government was doing in the Health Ministry. He finished by saying "Sorry it took so long."

Opposition Senate leader Kim Swan said: "You are not!"

His colleague UBP Senator Neville Darrell said: "One can only express outrage."

He said $132 million was due to be spent on Health but Senators had not been given the chance to debate it. "What do they have to hide?"

Senate budget committee chairman Jeannette Cannonier said: "The Opposition sets the time limits."

Senator Darrell acknowledged that but said 21 percent of the Government budget went on Health but the Opposition had only two or three minutes to ask questions.

"This is a significant portion of money," said Sen. Darrell. "We think the time should have been saved at least for asking how Government intends to spend the money."

Sen. Swan added: "Fifteen minutes at least."

Speaking after the session Senator Smith said: "It's their own stupidity."

He said the Opposition could allocated time spent on different departments as they wished and they had chosen to spend two hours on human affairs and the same amount on the Department of Environment.

Sen. Smith said the Health Ministry was "the most vital ministry in Government, it deals entirely with people things and they gave two hours and 25 minutes and they blame me?

"If I were to get political I would say they gave so little time because it's the one ministry they could not possibly claim wasn't doing anything."

He said the Opposition were accusing Government of hiding things but got angry when it set out the budget in intimate detail.

The Senate debates laws which have already been through the House of Assembly and has no powers to alter the Budget.

In budgets Government Senators often read out the same speeches already given by the Minister in preceding weeks outlining what departments will do.

Asked about what could be done to give Senators more time to actively debate the Budget Sen. Smith said: "The one thing we could possibly do, because the Senate is smaller, is allocate more time for debate."

Yesterday's session began with Government Senate leader David Burch saying Opposition Senators were playing to the gallery by claiming Progressive Labour Party Senators had stifled debate about the Auditor General's Report on the Second Senior School (the new Berkeley).

He said the Senate could not debate the matter in Wednesday's Education debate because it would be the subject of a separate debate and was already on the order paper.

The same parliamentary protocol had existed under the previous Government said Sen. Burch and he wondered why they were now claiming it was fatally flawed.