An open letter to the Hon. Prime Minister

24 November 2025

Dear Prime Minister:

An open letter to the Hon. Prime Minister

Long ago, on 24 July 2025, in DMS with PM, you made an exceptionally persuasive case for advancing the Age of Civil Legal Responsibility (Amendment) Bill (ACR).  Among the considerations you advanced were:

• There has already been extensive consultation, from as far back as 2021.
• This Bill was in draft form and under consideration before the NDC took office.
• You clarified the myth of the ‘age of consent’ and gave your rationale for the Bill.
• The Bill addresses needs of adolescents for healthcare – starting with education, information, and services.
• The ACR recognises that some parents are unapproachable or may refuse consent.
• The Bill addressed the reality that some parents are themselves abusers – men sleeping with their daughters.
• In such circumstances, obtaining consent is an impossibility.
• These situations pose difficulties for health workers who, without parental consent, cannot now lawfully provide information or care to that minor.
• The Bill fills the gap of our parental and cultural discomfort in speaking about sexual matters.
• The Bill seeks to give children lawful access to education and healthcare.
• The ACR is not about reducing parental authority.

Despite this lucid statement, the hullabaloo has persisted, and your government has been curiously silent.

As you know, Hon. Prime Minister, decades ago, five other Caribbean countries passed similar laws: Jamaica, 1979; Antigua and Barbuda, 1984; St Vincent and the Grenadines, 1987; British Virgin Islands, 1994; and St Lucia 2005. And two other countries have provisions that allow access: Guyana employs the Gillick test which applies to children younger than 16, and the Turks and Caicos Islands where there is no law restricting access.

Bottom line: There has been no legislative movement for 20 years.

Since consultation remains an issue, we would like to propose a simple, formal mechanism with which you can place this matter beyond doubt: Establish a Joint Select Committee (JSC).

These Committees are appropriate for highly complex matters, where Parliament needs the advice of technical experts, or for highly controversial issues that warrant a full and fair hearing of all concerns. The contentious noises around the ACR constitute such an issue.

JSCs afford both houses, all political parties, non-governmental organisations, religious bodies, professional associations, parents, youth groups, and individuals, opportunities to make submissions. Indeed, the JSC creates a level playing field. It gives everyone voice in a structured and orderly manner to make criticisms and offer recommendations to the Committee. Members can listen, deliberate, and revise the Bill before compiling their report and returning it to Parliament for a second reading.

We know only too well that in the Caribbean, this mechanism is sometimes employed, not with the honest intent of problem solving, but with the goal of burying an issue. How well a JSC functions is often determined by its terms of reference and its leadership.

If the government you lead is as sincere as you were four months ago to address the sexual plight of adolescents, then your Cabinet should move with dispatch to establish a JSC.

Sincerely,
Tonia Frame, PhD. President, GPPA
Fred Nunes, PhD. Consultant, ASPIRE