CAPE TOWN Top secret defence department documents which are under lock and key in Parliament will be made available to the public accounts committee which is spearheading the probe into the R43bn arms deal, National Assembly Speaker Frene Ginwala said yesterday.  

The documents were sent to the committee on condition that only the members of the committee would see them, and recently the department asked for them to be returned.  

The defence documents are among those which persuaded the committee that a multi-agency probe into the arms deal was needed.  

Ginwala, in response to questions, told a news conference that the documents had been in the possession of a single member of the public accounts committee and were kept at home. She said she had asked for them to be returned to Parliament for safekeeping, where they were at the moment. "They will be made available to the public accounts committee," Ginwala said. Commenting on whether or not the documents would be dealt with in public session by the committee, Ginwala said that committees had the discretion to meet in closed session, but the debate on their reasons for doing so should happen in public.  

She said the department supplied the documents on the understanding that they would be for the committee members' eyes only. Ginwala indicated there were potential conflicts between secrecy laws and guarantees of access to information in the Access to Information Act. These would have to be resolved through debate in the committee. She expressed the hope that the public accounts committee, a vital weapon in Parliament's armoury to account for the spending of public money, would not become partisan and that "members will continue to interrogate".  

Referring to the controversial demotion of African National Congress (ANC) MP Andrew Feinstein as party spokesman on public accounts, she said that with the ANC appointing deputy chief whip Geoff Doidge to the committee, it had become necessary.  

She said that Doidge was the most senior ANC person on the committee and it would have been strange if he had not taken over the leadership of the ANC component. She also said that all parties had strengthened their components in the committee by introducing senior MPs.  

Ginwala said that parliamentary committees would this year be more involved with monitoring the implementation of legislation than with writing important new laws.  

With acknowledgement to Wyndham Hartley and Business Day.