Law drafters in demand
Tuesday August 23 2011 | 11:37 AM

With Barbados looking into revising some of its legislation, such as that governing the sale of metals, Attorney-General Adriel Brathwaite yesterday raised concerns about the challenges such departments face.

He told a CARICOM Legislative Drafting Seminar yesterday that there was an increase in demand for legislation, but not an increase in the complement of trained competent legislative counsel to meet the demand.

In fact, the attorney general has made it clear that not only is there an unrealistic expectation of legislative draftsmen to produce work within outlined time lines and schedules, it also affects the efficiency of the office.

He made these comments while speaking during the three-day seminar by the CARICOM Secretariat and the Commonwealth Secretariat in collaboration with the British High Commission and the European Union at the Amarallyis Hotel.

"It has been shown time and time again that a main downfall of the legislative offices is a lack of resources to perform the role of the legislative draftsman," he said.

Brathwaite explained that while Commonwealth jurisdictions sought to train legal counsel in this field of law, they have failed to retain them.

"This is primarily due to a lack of adequate remuneration that is commensurate to the functions that a legislative drafter must perform and the lack of mobility within the civil service," he said.

But the attorney-general noted that with there being a greater demand for legislation and at a much faster pace, it now meant that there was a need to attract and retain counsel in such offices.

"This means going beyond the idea of training counsel. It means looking to adequately remunerate and create other incentives within the civil service to do so," he said.

Brathwaite noted that there was a preference by some to act as consultants for legislative drafting rather than being a part of the civil service because it attracted greater pay.

But, he said, the fact remained that some of them were not aware of the rudiments of legislative drafting or the peculiar practices and styles adopted by the offices which hired them, resulting in a legislative drafter in the civil service having to revise the drafts and conform them to the various styles and practices.

"It sometimes is even necessary to redraft the work of the consultants," he said.