Editorial | Legco must put its house in order

Lawmakers are allowing partisan politics to get in the way of passing important bills, including one that would increase maternity leave

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The Legco House Committee is still struggling to elect a chairman and get on with real business. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 9:40pm, 10 Dec 2019Updated: 10:58pm, 10 Dec 2019

The final year of the Legislative Council term is always busy, so much so that it is not unusual for bills and funding proposals to fall through because of a heavy backlog. Add the fallout of the ongoing social unrest and the outlook becomes even gloomier. After much wrangling, the first two rounds of economic relief measures were finally approved by lawmakers last week. But it has emerged that as many as 32 bills could lapse if the impasse fuelled by partisan political bickering drags on.

That the Legco House Committee has yet to elect a chairman after nine rounds of meetings since October is lamentable. With just seven months remaining in the current term, Chief Secretary for Administration Matthew Cheung Kin-chung has expressed deep regret over the “standstill” and rightly urged lawmakers to stop putting politics before public interest.

Comprising all lawmakers except the president, the committee oversees the pace of bills scrutiny and other internal business. But like the filibuster at the start of the meetings of the Finance Committee that oversees funding approval, the House Committee is still struggling to elect a chairman and get on with real business. Currently, 18 bills are before the legislature, seven of which were tabled after the summer recess. But they are still pending scrutiny because of the leadership vacuum. Of the 11 inherited from the previous sessions, at least five have been vetted. But the stalemate has prevented enactment with a final vote at Legco’s full meetings.

The situation does not bode well for another 14 bills due to be submitted in the remaining months. Among them are amendments to increase the statutory maternity leave by another four weeks to a total of 14 weeks.

The problem goes beyond having no one to keep the house in order. As all blueprints that cannot be enacted within the current term will lapse and have to be reintroduced in the new term, the efforts and resources on preparing and vetting the bills will be wasted. The government should prioritise in light of the importance of the bills and the constraints. But lawmakers must first put politics aside and get on with their constitutional duty.