The OBA voted for the status quo with regard to price controls … and Bermudian families are paying for it
Statement by Alexa Lightbourne, Minister of Home Affairs:
On 14 September, the Senate defeated the Cost of Living Commission Amendment (No. 2) Bill 2026 on a tied vote. Every Opposition senator voted against it. The Leader of the Opposition had the audacity to call the result a win “for all Bermudians”. The single person, the senior, the family at the register, won nothing that day. Their bill is the same this week as it was last week, and the information that could change this remains out of the public’s view.
The Bill did three things. Firstly, it allowed the Cost of Living Commission to designate critical services and monitor their prices. Secondly, it set a process for reviewing price increases on essential commodities. Lastly, it allowed the Commission to work with other public authorities that protect consumers. Each power served one purpose, which is to let the public body charged with the cost of living see how a price is built.
The Opposition Senate Leader says the Bill gave Government sweeping discretionary powers over business with no “demonstrated mechanism for bringing prices down”. The mechanism is information. A country cannot lower a cost it cannot see. Every serious remedy for high prices starts with the same question: where in the chain, from the dock to the shelf, does the dollar go?
The record shows why the law was needed. The Commission asked five grocers for pricing data under the existing law. One answered, and the Ministry has publicly credited Lindo’s for doing so. The reporting template was approved by retailers, at an in-person meeting, along with the Ministry. It was built on an export they described as easy to produce from their own inventory system. Four of five still did not file. Voluntary cooperation was tried, and it produced a twenty per cent response rate.
The Opposition says the real drivers are shipping, import duty and energy. Government agrees that they matter, and has acted on them. Duty on essential goods has been cut. The question that follows every duty cut is whether the savings reached the shelf. Today nobody can answer it with evidence. The Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the Bill, proposed an independent check of a shipment to confirm that duty relief reached the consumer. That proposal concedes the central point. Relief that cannot be traced cannot be guaranteed, and the Bill gave the Commission the means to trace it.
Consider how the Bill fell. The House of Assembly passed it. That House holds 36 members, each chosen by voters, and 25 of them sit with the Government that Bermudians elected in 2025 on a promise to act on the cost of living. The Senate holds eleven members, and none of them holds a seat won at the polls. Five sit on the advice of the Premier and carry the programme the country voted for. Three sit on the advice of the Opposition Leader. Three are chosen at the Governor’s discretion and answer to no constituency, no platform and no election. On 14 September the three Opposition senators voted no. Two of the Governor’s appointees, the President, Senator Joan Dillas-Wright, and the Vice-President, Senator John Wight, voted no with them. The third was absent. Five appointed votes stopped a Bill that the elected House had passed.
The Senate has a concise role, which is to revise and to improve. Bermudians are entitled to ask how far unelected representation should be able to throttle the programme of an elected Government, and on whose behalf. A senior on North Shore can remove her MP at the next election. She has no means of removing a senator she never chose.
The power to stop a Bill carries a duty to master it. The Hansard of the Senate debate records senators who opposed the Bill, opening their questions with an admission that they should already know the answer. The points raised were elementary, and the answers sat in the Bill, in the brief, and in the existing Act. A family’s grocery bill deserves better preparation from those who hold a veto over its relief. When preparation is thin, the weight falls on the people’s agenda.
Scrutiny improves a law. The Opposition tabled no amendment to this Bill in the House, and none in the Senate. The government, by contrast, changed course where retailers made a sound case. When grocers raised concern about perishables, the Commission agreed that price increase submissions will be reviewed by a quorum and returned within 24 hours of receipt.
The status quo has a constituency, and it has never been the household. We see its cost when a senior on a fixed pension puts the chicken back. We see it when a mother takes a second shift to cover the same cart of groceries. We see it when a young Bermudian studies the price of coming home and decides to stay away. The Chamber’s own paper cites Government survey work showing cost of living as the leading reason Bermudians give for leaving.
The Opposition knows how to bring legislation. It tabled an Absentee Voting Bill in 2025. It tabled a road safety Bill this summer. It says it will support any law that lowers the cost of living, and it has named shipping, duty and energy as the causes. The country should now see that Bill. Bermudians are entitled to read its clauses, to test its mechanism, and to know the date by which a family would feel it at the register.
The mandate of 2025 was for unity, equity and tangible progress. Government will keep using every power it holds to deliver it. Until the Opposition tables its answer, its vote stands as a vote for prices as they are. Bermudian families have paid for the status quo long enough.
Alexa Lightbourne is the Minister of Home Affairs.
