Who may serve as chair of a special conciliation committee, and when does a member become chair without any election?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
For this exercise we read the paper listing the committee's members and noting which of them sit on the Labour Committee representing the public interest, the record of the ballot among the members, and the minutes showing who was elected chair and when.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the provision's ordering at face value: the special conciliation committee has a chair, elected by ballot among the special conciliation members who are Labour Committee members representing the public interest, and if the committee is made up only of persons who are not members of that Labour Committee, the ballot is held among those members instead.
Another reading centres the proviso, which displaces the ballot: where the public-interest-representing special conciliation member is the only such member on the committee, that member becomes chair by virtue of the office, so the provision settles who chairs without any election, while leaving open how the ballot is conducted in the other cases.
Your judgment
If the public-interest member who became chair under the proviso later steps down, who is to chair the committee then?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to change who may be chair or how the chair is chosen, or if a decision or new record shows how the election among members is carried out.