Speaker cannot limit government spokesman from making questions in parliament - ruling

Without the comfort of a code of ethics regulating the role of a government spokesperson or a similar role held in the House of Commons, Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia was not in a position to say whether Carmelo Abela’s appointment as government spokesperson precluded him from raising questions in parliament.

The Speaker was asked to give a ruling on Abela’s role by Opposition leader Simon Busuttil after the MP, also the government’s whip, made a series of questions following a ministerial statement given by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in parliament.

“The Speaker should investigate how Abela is making these questions to the Prime Minister when he, as the government’s spokesman, should already know the answer,” Busuttil said yesterday.

Busuttil added that Abela was being paid €58,000 for his roles as the government’s official spokesman: “He is being to answer questions made to the government and not to raise the questions himself. He must decide what he wants to be in life.”

Supporting Busuttil’s call, PN whip David Agius said the Labour Opposition, in the previous legislature, used to stop parliamentary assistants from making questions.

In a reaction, Muscat said he had no problem with anyone making questions and said that “it was the previous administration that had decided how to regulate the invention – in the positive sense – of parliamentary assistants even though this featured nowhere in our regulations”.

Muscat added that this had been the way the previous administration had chosen to regulate itself.

“The government spokesman is our spokesman outside parliament. I think this is obvious and this shouldn’t preclude him from making questions,” Muscat said.

After consulting previous rulings and the procedure in the House of Commons, the Speaker ruled that he did not have the comfort to “in any way limit Abela’s functions as an elected member of parliament”.