The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

Parliamentarians passed a new Law Reform and Revision Act yesterday to modernise the legislative process.

State Minister for Legal Affairs Jomo Campbell said the legislation would reform the Law Reform Commission by improving its staffing and management.

The bill would change the commission's makeup so that it consists of up to three rather than five people appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister.

Mr Campbell said the bill “broadens the qualifications for those being selected as commissioners by the prime minister".

“This passing of this bill will also allow public officers to be appointed as commissioners,” he said.

“An integral step in modernising the commission’s mandate is the proper appointment of the Revision Commissioner. The law presently allows for a Reform Commissioner.”

He said the reform commissioner would conduct and manage a revision and consolidation exercise to ensure the country's laws remain updated and consolidated.

Mr Campbell said reviewing legislation related to family law and domestic violence should be a key focus of the commission.

“Before my election to this House, I was a practising attorney at the Bar and represented scores of persons seeking judicial assistance to obtain custody of their children or to prevent an estranged partner from interfering or abusing them, and other matters connected to families,” he said.

“While I, along with my colleagues at the Bar, did our best to advance our respective client’s interests, the unfortunate reality was and remains that attorneys and judges are working within a system using laws that are not often fit.”

Mr Campbell highlighted outdated laws such as the Matrimonial Clauses Act and the Adoption of Children Act and said such laws needed to be amended.

The Child Protection Act, though passed in recent times, contains “legislative glitches in that unmarried fathers were determined to have no standing to petition courts for visitation rights for their child,” he said.

He continued: “The Bahamas requires sound and relevant laws to cope with change, progress and development. The Law Reform and Revision Bill 2022 will greatly assist in modernising the law for reforming, revising, and consolidating the laws of The Bahamas and for connected purposes.”

Meanwhile, St Anne's MP Adrian White said the bill was not groundbreaking or much different from existing legislation. 


East Grand Bahama MP Kwasi Thompson said the new changes were minor and told the government not to oversell the bill. 


"What you are putting on the record are changes. There are some minor changes that are being made to the law reform and revision commission, but you cannot oversell it in its importance and what it is going to accomplish in the country,” Mr Thompson said.

“You are doing your job. You are doing what needs to be done but you are not revolutionising the law reform commission.”

"What you are doing is making changes, necessary changes to the law, but there are so many more things that actually need to occur for this to make sense."

Nevertheless, opposition members supported the bill.