Shadow Finance Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin pledged yesterday to push again for the parliamentary committee which scrutinises the spending of public money to be opened up.

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee - which Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin has chaired for several years - agreed unanimously four years ago that its meetings should be open to the public and press but they remain closed.

The Deputy Opposition Leader said last night she would refer it again to the House of Assembly's Rules and Privileges Committee in the next parliamentary session.

"Every sophisticated jurisdiction holds their PAC meetings in public," she said. "I think even Cuba does.

"Bermuda is one of the more sophisticated jurisdictions and we meet in camera which is absolutely primitive."

Auditor General Larry Dennis told The Royal Gazette that Bermuda was a rare example of a democratic country whose Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meetings were not open to the public and press.

"It's rare," he said. "Jamaica has open meetings as does Canada and the UK, all the bigger Commonwealth countries and I think almost all the islands in the West Indies.

"We certainly stand out as one of those rare ones. It's not as if we are a third world country. It stands out that we are in that category."

The Royal Gazette, which launched its A Right to Know: Giving People Power campaign this week calling for more transparency in government and publicly funded bodies, wants to see Bermuda's Public Accounts Committee opened up to taxpayers as soon as possible.

The committee — made up of three Government backbenchers and two Opposition MPs — has been debating whether it should do so since 1999 and in July 2004 said this in its report to the House of Assembly: "There now appears to be unanimous support by members for the change and a consensus that open meetings would increase transparency and improve the effectiveness of your committee."

The last request for open meetings was turned down by the R&P committee.

Speaker Stanley Lowe told this newspaper that the committee — which the Speaker usually chairs — could decide to revisit the issue itself or an MP could refer the matter.

"It's been done before," he said. "We didn't get very far with it but it can be raised to the committee.

"What would happen is the House Rules and Privileges Committee would discuss it and make a recommendation to the House. The House would have to say yes, to approve it or not approve. That's how the Rules (of the House) get changed."

Grant Gibbons, deputy chairman of the PAC in the last session, said the committee was one in which politics was usually put aside in order that the spending in the budget be analysed in depth.

He said open meetings would ensure committees members were well prepared and had done their homework — and that civil servants summoned before the committee to account for how taxpayers' dollars were being spent were up to speed.

"We are not questioning government policy; we are questioning was the money spent in a way which is appropriate and basically without waste."

Dr. Gibbons said he first realised how unusual Bermuda was at an auditor generals' conference he attended in Canada when PAC chairman.

"I was rather surprised to learn that everybody else's public accounts committee was open to the public. They were equally astonished to hear that ours was closed."

He pointed out that the public might have to be barred from some parts of the meetings — such as if commercially sensitive information or security issues were being discussed.

In recent years, the PAC has looked into: spending at Bermuda College, the Bermuda Housing Corporation and Bermuda Hospitals Board; overspending on the new Berkeley Institute project; the Island's contributory pension fund; the systems in place at the Tax Commissioner's Office and the accounts of the now-defunct National Drug Commission.

Mr. Dennis said any government would do well to make the PAC transparent — because once in opposition, they would inevitably support its meetings being open.

"Probably for the first meeting the press and everybody will show up in droves but it settles down like anything else," he said.