Draft administrative code almost complete

The parliamentary committee on the re-codification and consolidation of laws this afternoon continued discussing the administrative code being drafted by the Dean of the Faculty of Law Kevin Aquilina.

The committee chairman, Franco Debono explained that the reform proposed by the committee for the Gozo court will be tabled in parliament to be discussed by the chamber of representatives.

Kevin Aquilina said that the draft administrative code which is divided in three books, is almost complete. Aquilina explained that the first book consists of the new laws he has drafted on the recommendation of the select committee, while the second book is a collection of existing laws such as the legislation on government property, data protection and freedom of information.

He said, some of these laws have been amended, partly due to achieve a uniformity in the terminology used.

Aquilina explained that the only novelty in the second book will be the legislation on parliamentary assistants. "Since there is no legislation on the function of parliamentary assistants, except for the code of ethics, I have sent a questionnaire to the parliamentary assistants to understand their roles." As a result, Aqulina said that he has drafted three articles which define the function of parliamentary assistants.

At this point, Nationalist backbencher Franco Debono reminded the committee and listeners that the parliamentary assistants were introduced by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in the aftermath of his appeal to strengthen the role of MPs in 2010.

Aquilina also explained that the third book includes the procedural part of the code and said that the code, which includes over 1000 articles, should soon be complete as soon as cross references are removed and the terminology is standardized.