The Anguilla House of Assembly took offence with the casual attire of Leader of the Opposition Hubert Hughes on Tuesday May 27 and asked him to quit his seat and to take up a place in the public gallery instead. Mr. Hughes appeared in formal dress during the morning session of the House when he contributed to the debate on the Telecommunications Act 2003, but returned in the afternoon attired in a short-sleeved shirt outside his trousers.

The dialogue in the House went as follows until the radio broadcast was cut off:
Speaker Leroy Rogers: “Member for Road South, I will not permit you to take part in the proceedings in your present attire. It is not parliamentary attire. You came here with your shirt out of your pants, without your jacket and tie. I will not permit you to take part in this present attire.”

Hughes: “Tell me, Sir. You have a dress code for in here?”

Rogers: “Member for Road South, I will not permit you to take part in the proceedings unless you are in proper parliamentary attire.”

Hughes: “But you are worse than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Speaker: “I am going to ask you to take a seat in the other chairs down there.”

Hughes: Mr. Speaker, I am sitting in the House: I am properly clad.

Speaker: “Member for Road South, I am asking you once again since you are not responding, to take a seat down there unless you have proper attire.”

Chief Minister Fleming: “We can’t understand how the Leader of the Opposition could disrespect this House to come in the attire he is in…Even Mr. Baird [opposition member] is against that.”

Hughes: “Mr. Speaker, I am properly attired.”

Speaker: “Member for Road South, I am going to ask you one last time...”

Hughes: “I want to see the dress code in writing. I am a Caribbean man.”

Speaker: “I am going to ask the House of Assembly to recognise the attire of the Member for Road South and I am going to ask for the support of the whole of the Assembly to ask him, unless he has proper attire, to sit in the strangers’ gallery.”

The broadcast was cut periodically as the argument worsened. When it resumed later, the dialogue continued with the Speaker saying to Mr.Hughes: “It is a lack of respect for this House and if you open your mouth one more time, just one word, I’ll ask the [police] officer here [to take you to the gallery] unless you have proper attire. It is a complete lack of respect for this House.”

Mr. Hughes kept quiet while Minister of Communications continued his debate on the Telecommunications Bill. The matter, however, surfaced again when Chief Minister Osbourne Fleming rose to speak.
“Mr. Speaker before I make my contribution, I must tell you that I am very, very annoyed this afternoon to see the disrespect that the Member for Road South has for this House,” Mr. Fleming said. “He has come in this House dressed in his shirt outside his pants. To that end I would like to move a motion that the Member for Road South be removed from the seat that he is seating in and to sit in the [gallery]. I don’t think it is respectful for the other members here to be all attired in this Honourable House and there is this… dressed with his shirt outside, inside the Chamber. It is unfair.”

Speaker: “Do we have a seconder to that?”

Minister of Finance, Victor Banks: “Mr. Speaker I second the motion.”

The motion was carried with no abstentions heard. Mr. Hughes commented that he would be making a complaint to the International Court of Justice. He then left his seat and sat in the gallery with the formally-dressed Didric Webster, an election candidate, before eventually leaving the Chambers.

Mr. Hughes defending himself in the House of Assembly with colleagues Albert Hughes and Edison Baird.

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