As Senate set to debate Procurement Bill today

Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

As the Sen­ate re­turns to­day to de­bate an­oth­er bill that could re­sult in a 15-15 dead­lock, for­mer Sen­ate pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith has weighed in on the ex­er­cise of a cast­ing vote in the Up­per House.

Hamel-Smith, who served as Sen­ate pres­i­dent from June 2010 to Feb­ru­ary 2015 dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, said the is­sue of a cast­ing vote nev­er arose dur­ing his tenure.

“So I can­not claim to have es­tab­lished a prac­tice on that is­sue my­self,” he said from Lon­don.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that while the Con­sti­tu­tion re­quires the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent to cast a vote when the cham­ber is equal­ly di­vid­ed, it does not pre­scribe whether that vote should be cast for or against a bill. Nor do Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Or­ders re­quire rea­sons to be giv­en for rul­ings made by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer.

“My start­ing point, if I were faced with this is­sue, would have been the Sen­ate’s own Stand­ing Or­ders. They di­rect the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, where ap­plic­a­ble, to look to the prac­tice of the UK House of Com­mons,” Hamel-Smith said.

Hamel-Smith was re­spond­ing to a query from Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s con­tro­ver­sial tie-break­ing vote last Wednes­day dur­ing de­bate on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, which en­abled the leg­is­la­tion to pass.

Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors vot­ed 15-strong in sup­port of the bill, while the six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors com­bined to op­pose it, re­sult­ing in a 15-15 tie. The leg­is­la­tion re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty to pass, mean­ing the Gov­ern­ment need­ed one ad­di­tion­al vote. Mark’s cast­ing vote broke the dead­lock in favour of the bill, de­part­ing from the con­ven­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­lowed by par­lia­men­tary pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers, who gen­er­al­ly use cast­ing votes to main­tain the sta­tus quo. Mark lat­er said he had con­duct­ed re­search be­fore tak­ing that de­ci­sion.

The Sen­ate is to­day sched­uled to de­bate the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, which has gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant con­cern over pro­vi­sions that would ex­empt sev­er­al sec­tors from over­sight and lim­it the pow­ers of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor. The bill was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, with Gov­ern­ment mem­bers vot­ing in favour and the PNM op­pos­ing it.

Like the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion re­quires on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage in the Sen­ate, mean­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s 15 votes would need the sup­port of at least one ad­di­tion­al sen­a­tor.

Hamel-Smith point­ed to the prin­ci­ple as­so­ci­at­ed with for­mer House of Com­mons Speak­er John Eve­lyn Deni­son, com­mon­ly known as Deni­son’s Rule.

“The prin­ci­ple as­so­ci­at­ed with Speak­er Deni­son is that, on a fi­nal de­ci­sion where fur­ther dis­cus­sion is no longer pos­si­ble, a cast­ing vote should not bring about a change with­out a ma­jor­i­ty. A pre­vi­ous Trinidad and To­ba­go Sen­ate Pres­i­dent has ex­press­ly used those prin­ci­ples when ex­plain­ing cast­ing votes,” he said.

Hamel-Smith ac­knowl­edged that some may ar­gue the de­ci­sion of the elect­ed House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives should car­ry par­tic­u­lar weight.

“There’s an ar­gu­ment that the elect­ed House’s de­ci­sion de­serves par­tic­u­lar weight. But that ar­gu­ment should be con­sid­ered along­side our Stand­ing Or­ders and Sen­ate prece­dent; it does not, by it­self, set­tle how a cast­ing vote should be ex­er­cised.”

Based on the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to him, Hamel-Smith said he would have re­gard­ed Deni­son’s Rule as the stronger, though non-bind­ing, guide at the fi­nal read­ing stage.

“I’d have re­gard­ed Deni­son’s prin­ci­ple as the stronger non-bind­ing guide at a fi­nal read­ing, while recog­nis­ing that an­oth­er pres­i­dent could reach a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion,” he said.

He stressed, how­ev­er, that he did not close­ly fol­low the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill de­bate.

“Hav­ing said that, be­ing out of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I did not fol­low the Sen­ate pro­ceed­ings re­gard­ing the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and there­fore do not claim to be privy to all the sur­round­ing events.”

Hamel-Smith al­so not­ed that the Sen­ate Stand­ing Or­ders re­quire ref­er­ence to House of Com­mons prac­tice on­ly in “so far as they are ap­plic­a­ble,” leav­ing room for dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions.

“In this con­text, it is al­so note­wor­thy that the UK’s un­elect­ed sec­ond cham­ber does not treat Deni­son’s ‘no fi­nal de­ci­sion with­out a ma­jor­i­ty’ prin­ci­ple as con­trol­ling every tied vote on a bill. It al­so has a process for send­ing amend­ments back to the Com­mons for re­con­sid­er­a­tion,” he said.

“The UK process gives the Lords a prac­ti­cal way to seek im­prove­ments while pre­serv­ing the Com­mons’ ul­ti­mate au­thor­i­ty over most pub­lic leg­is­la­tion.”

Hamel-Smith stressed that his com­ments should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a crit­i­cism of Mark.

“I make no al­le­ga­tion about the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent’s mo­tives. The prop­er ques­tion is whether the par­lia­men­tary prin­ci­ple be­hind the vote is per­sua­sive.”

He added that his po­si­tion was ground­ed in Sen­ate Stand­ing Or­ders 2 and 54, the record­ed use of Deni­son’s prin­ci­ples dur­ing a 2022 Sen­ate sit­ting, and the par­lia­men­tary au­thor­i­ty Er­sk­ine May.

“In the present con­text, I make no sug­ges­tion that the cast­ing vote was legal­ly in­valid or that the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent act­ed im­prop­er­ly,” Hamel-Smith said.