The Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion have both called for MPs on the op­pos­ing side to be re­ferred to Par­lia­ment’s Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges over al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing state­ments, in sep­a­rate com­plaints raised dur­ing Wednes­day’s sit­ting.

San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein asked that for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert be re­ferred to the com­mit­tee for in­vok­ing Stand­ing Or­der 49 dur­ing last Fri­day’s de­bate on the TTRA Re­peal Bill, claim­ing a mat­ter in­volv­ing him was still un­der ap­peal. Ho­sein said this blocked de­bate on a High Court rul­ing that had al­ready been up­held. “The mem­ber would have had knowl­edge that the ap­peal was dis­missed, as he was at all ma­te­r­i­al times rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys-at-law,” Ho­sein said.

Im­bert lat­er ad­dressed the House and apol­o­gised. He said when he raised the sub ju­dice point on June 13, he be­lieved the ap­peal was still ac­tive, since he had re­ceived no up­dates or com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the mat­ter. “Al­though I spoke in good faith and with­out any in­tent to de­ceive... I wish to un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise for a mis­state­ment in the House re­gard­ing the sta­tus of Civ­il Ap­peal 268 of 2020,” Im­bert said. He con­firmed that the ap­peal had in fact been struck out in Feb­ru­ary, but that he on­ly be­came aware of this af­ter check­ing with at­tor­neys fol­low­ing last week’s de­bate.