MP wants compliance audit of IC
Published:Wednesday | October 23, 2024 | 12:10 AM
St Catherine South West Member of Parliament Everald Warmington yesterday, for the first time, called for what he described as a “full compliance, value for money audit, of the Integrity Commission (IC)”.
In a personal explanation, which is allowed under the Standing Orders, Warmington said that, during a meeting of the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament last week, he asked for a “value for money audit”, which he said involves reviewing programmes, projects and procedures of the IC to evaluate how well resources are managed.
In a statement, last week, the IC made it clear that the anti-corruption body has been audited annually over the last six years and has produced the audited financial statements as part of its annual reports.
On October 15, Warmington declared that he had never seen an audit of the IC tabled in Parliament, yet the agency was spending taxpayers’ money.
“When are we going to see audits of that department over the years?” he questioned, charging that “there is no way we are going to approve another $2 billion for a department that has not been audited for years”.
WARNING
He even warned that, if the audit was not tabled by March 2025, he would not allow the Parliament to sign off on allocations for the running of the agency.
“Ironically, the Integrity Commission Parliament Oversight Committee, of which Mr Warmington is a member, met with the commission for several hours (Tuesday, October 15). One of the stated purposes of the meeting was to review the 2023-2024 annual report of the commission, inclusive of the commission’s audited financial statements for the 2023-2024 fiscal year,” the IC stated. An apology was tendered for Warmington’s absence at that meeting.
Yesterday, Warmington said he was demanding an audit of the IC to examine its “management and administrative control, security control, information and technology control, external and internal controls, human resource practices, policies and procedures and oversight procedures”.
He also sought to challenge the constitutionality of the auditor general being a commissioner of the IC.
His remarks triggered a point of order from Phillip Paulwell, leader of opposition business in the House.
According to Paulwell, when the St Catherine South West MP spoke last week, “it wasn’t about the operational efficiency of the Integrity Commission but about the non-tabling of audited statements”.
Paulwell accused Warmington of going “way out of the bounds of what is permissible under a private explanation”.
He cautioned that comments about the constitutional role of the auditor general in relation to the IC was in breach of the non-controversial nature of personal explanations.
Standing Order number 18 states: “With the leave of the Speaker and by the indulgence of the House, a member may make a personal explanation, although there be no question before the House; but no controversial matter may be brought forward nor may debate arise upon the explanation”.