Legal Practice Bill: Passage through NCOP procedurally incorrect

Note to editors: The following deceleration was delivered in Parliament today by the DA's Shadow Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Dene Smuts MP, during the Consideration of the Legal Practice Bill.

The DA believes that the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) took a final vote on the highly controversial Legal Practice Bill, with amendments, without the requisite number of properly mandated provinces.

The votes of five provinces are required in the case of a bill like the Legal Practice Bill, which was "tagged" as a section 76 Bill.

Our advice is that one of the five provinces that supported the Bill, Gauteng, did not have a valid and properly conferred final or voting mandate.

Under the Mandating Procedures of Provinces Act, the full provincial Legislature (and not a committee) must confer authority on its provincial delegation to the NCOP to cast a vote when the relevant NCOP select committee considers a Section 76 bill prior to voting thereon in an NCOP plenary.

Our DA colleagues in the Gauteng Legislature advise that the Gauteng Legislature conferred no such mandate.

The Legal Practice Bill has consequently not been properly passed by the NCOP. The amendments "adopted" by the NCOP and sent back to the National Assembly therefore have no status, and we do not see how the National Aseembly can accept them today, nor how the Bill could then be sent to the President for assent.

Issued by the DA, March 12 2014

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