He said per Order 78 of the Standing Orders, MPs were supposed to have sufficient copies of the bill before it was laid last Tuesday.

Alhaji Muntaka then requested the House to rescind its earlier decision to lay the bill "simply because we don't have sufficient copies".

Bill

The Minority Leader, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, said since the explanation was that the bill was of urgent nature, MPs should have been provided with sufficient copies.

He said the Minority members wanted copies of the bill for their own perusal and to satisfy themselves that the basic requirement of the law had been met.

"We are committed to deepening good governance but we want to do it based on rules. If you believe it is important, let's have copies," he said.

The MP for Bolgatanga East, Dr Dominic Ayine, said the committee which was mandated to consider the bill did not have copies.

Majority's response

The Majority Leader, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, said Alhaji Muntaka's call for the withdrawal of the bill had no bearing on the Standing Orders of Parliament.

He said the laying of the bill conformed to the rules of procedure in the House.

He said 30 copies of the bill were made available to his office last Tuesday but because of the fire that gutted an office on the 10th floor of the Job 600 building last Tuesday night, he could not access his office to pick the copies.

Speaker's orders

The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu, said Alhaji Muntaka had a concern and that it had to be addressed.

He, therefore, ordered the clerks to make copies of the bill available to the MPs.

The Office of the Special Prosecutor Bill, 2017 is to establish the Office of a Special Prosecutor as a specialised agency to investigate specific cases of corruption involving public officers and politically exposed persons in the performance of their functions, as well as persons in the private sector implicated in the commission of corruption.