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{
    "id": 553567,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/553567/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 121,
    "type": "other",
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    "content": "recommendations that we made, as the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations with regard to a reduction that we made to the budget of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), were supported by Members of that Committee and the report was adopted. Subsequently, as a result of whatever intervention there may have been, that issue was reopened. The recommendations were reversed and the reductions we made were reversed in a subsequent meeting when a resolution of the Committee had already been passed. We want a clear ruling from the Chair as chairmen of committees, because the functions we perform and undertake are now under threat. The motivation of Members to sit for hours on end scrutinizing budgets and listening to presentations from Ministries will diminish significantly, if it is then known hence forward that whatever recommendations we make, or whatever reports we write, may be disregarded since all it takes is a telephone intervention by a Cabinet Secretary (CS) to the Chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee to rubbish everything committee chairs and Members have done in their meetings. So, we need a clear line to be drawn. If this is a budget-making Parliament, let it be so. If it is not, let us also know so that we can know how to proceed going forward; we cannot be put in a position where committee chairs and Members are used as a rubber stamp and recommendation that we make are disregarded. We must have clarity of our functions; the Cabinet Secretaries (CSs) must also know that there is a function we are performing in this House."
}