But is this "day to day administration" by ministers of state even legal? After all, the laws, all fo them say, "the minister shall" - those laws say nothing about ministers of state. We asked the Prime Minister about this today:...
Jules Vasquez
"You use measure of precision in your language when you said "it is expected that the ministers of state will be responsible for these subsidiaries responsibilities." However, in deed it has to be an expectation because the way the law is setup, the power, the authority is conferred solely in the minister. So the two questions arise; 1) no minister is under any legal compulsion to delegate such authority and 2) is it legal if they operate really as full ministers signing legislation or statutory instruments or whatever the case may be?"
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"Well, to answer the first half of your question, while I concede what you urge with respect where the formal legal authority has to continue to reside. So we really have no fear at all that this will not work. Everybody is onboard. While it is true that if a substantive minister wishes to resist, he will have the law on his side. He won't have right on his side. He won't have the support of the cabinet on his side and if he can't come to terms with what we require as a cabinet and as a government - then that will be a different story. The question of who is able to sign statutory instruments is a nice one and it may well be that in fact statutory instruments can only be signed by full ministers and not ministers of state. If that is the case, it won't be a problem. Because we require in any case that all statutory instruments before they are signed by anybody come to cabinet."
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