A meeting of the Privileges Committee of Parliament to sanction Opposition Member of Parliament, Karl Samuda for "deliberately misleading" the House in the controversy surrounding the Noel Hylton Report on the Sandals Whitehouse project, hit a snag yesterday.

Opposition Leader and committee member, Bruce Golding, told his colleagues that the matter referred by the House was not properly before the committee and, as such, the motion of censure should be returned to the House for clarification.

At the end of its deliberations, Committee Chairman Michael Peart accepted Mr. Golding's recommendation.

According to Mr. Golding, a member cannot be punished for being censured. He added that sanctions could only apply if the member had committed an infraction to include contempt or breach of privilege.

The censure motion has not identified the alleged violation that is now before the committee for consideration.

"There are no provisions in the Standing Orders or in the conventions of the House for any punishment in relation to a censure," Golding maintained.

However, Mr. Peart said the member's misleading pronouncements showed disdain for the House. He explained that Mr. Samuda's specific allegations were refuted in the House, yet he did not concede that he had misled Parliament.

Parliamentary procedures

Quoting from Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, an authority on parliamentary procedures (chapter 24), Mr. Golding said the Privileges Committee's function is to consider "such questions of privilege as may be referred to it by the House," and not to preside over a censure motion.

Government committee member Charles Learmond said he was of the view that the committee has the authority to prescribe sanctions against the member, declaring that he had no doubt Mr. Samuda's remarks constituted a breach of contempt.

Another Government committee member, Victor Cummings, said the House did not err in its decision to refer the motion to the Privileges Committee.

"It did not have to state specifically in the resolution that (Samuda's statement) was a breach of privilege," he said.

The motion was moved by Information and Development Minister, Donald Buchanan.

Mr. Samuda, in his presentation to the Sectoral Debate in Parliament earlier this year, had charged that chairman of the Port Authority of Jamaica, Noel Hylton, had submitted a report on the Sandals Whitehouse Hotel project to former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson and the Cabinet, a claim which has been strongly denied by the Government.