SPY BILL: NCOP COMMITTEE CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS ON LAST-MINUTE CHANGES

SPY BILL: NCOP COMMITTEE CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS ON LAST-MINUTE CHANGES

• 19 April 2024
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

The ad hoc committee established by the NCOP to process the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill during the final leg of its passage through Parliament has issued a notice calling for written submissions by 12 May 2024 on matters for which no provision has yet been made.

According to the committee notice, these matters were ‘considered’ by the National Assembly’s ad hoc committee but could not be included in the Bill’s ‘B’ version because of ‘time constraints’. They entail:

• amending the Secret Services Act, 1978, to provide for the establishment of an evaluation committee within 12 months of the Bill’s enactment
• providing for the appointment of a deputy inspector-general of intelligence, and
• regarding Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence:
  • providing for the appointment of a deputy chair
  • providing for bi-annual meetings between the committee and the President
  • empowering the committee to request the inspector-general of intelligence to conduct ‘in-depth reviews of select matters … (deem(ed) essential for fulfilling its oversight function’, and
  • aligning the committee’s annual reporting obligations with parliamentary reporting requirements.

On 14 March 2024, the National Assembly’s ad hoc committee responsible for processing the Bill tabled an interim report in the House requesting permission to extend its scope to deal with these very matters. Presumably, permission was duly granted. The NCOP ad hoc committee notice makes no reference to this. However, the document was included in an SA Legal Academy report at the time.

On 9 April 2024, the NCOP committee issued its first notice calling for written submissions on the Bill, as SA Legal Academy also reported. The latest notice appears to have been issued as an afterthought. 

Please click the links below for more information:

• latest committee notice
• Bill’s ‘B’ version
• SA Legal Academy report on National Assembly committee request to broaden Bill’s scope 
• SA Legal Academy report on first NCOP committee call for submissions 

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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