MPs should have option to go full-time, standards committee MP says

Backbench MPs should be able to choose whether to take their parliamentary duties up on a full-time basis, and consequently be stopped from taking on other roles, a government member of the newly-formed public standards committee has suggested.

Labour MP Edward Zammit Lewis, a government representative on the Standing Committee for Standards in Public Life, was replying to a question by this newspaper on whether he thought MPs who are given public appointments, should be – upon the end of their term – subjected to rules which stop them from taking up positions which conflict with their previous public role.

The government is currently moving to update its Public Administration Act, with one of the proposed changes being the introduction of so-called “revolving doors” rules, meant to prevent high-ranking public employees inside regulatory authorities from taking jobs with companies with which they would have had dealings. While such public service employees would have to abide by these restrictions, they would not automatically apply to MPs who are not considered civil servants.

Zammit Lewis said the issue of whether ‘revolving doors’ rules should also apply to such MPs had to be viewed in the context of the wider debate on whether parliamentarians should be part-timers or full-timers.

“We need to keep in mind that Maltese MPs are part-timers, and this makes the likelihood of them having some kind of conflict much greater, because they have to be engaged in other types of employment at the same time, since their parliamentary honorarium isn’t sufficient to get by,” the former tourism minister said, adding, “Every MP has to do other work, it’s a cross-party reality.”

In an ideal world, MPs should only be occupied with their parliamentary role, he said. “But can we afford this? This is why the issue is connected to whether our MPs should be full-timers or not.”

One way of dealing with this situation, he said, was to allow MPs the option to go full-time. “I believe – and this is my personal opinion, not the Labour Party’s position – that we should start giving MPs the option of being full-timers. I think that, to start out, we shouldn’t oblige them to be full-timers, but they should be given the possibility.”

If an MP does choose the full-time route, ethics dictate that they be prohibited from taking on any other role, he underlined. “It can then be analysed how this system works out, and whether full-time MPs start performing their roles better.”

He conceded that “nobody will give a straight answer” to the specific question of revolving doors rules applying to MPs, but reiterated that a first possible step would be to offer a full-time route.

Zammit Lewis also raised the point that it wasn’t only the current Labour government which had handed out public appointments to its MPs.
“The issue of backbenchers being given secondary roles isn’t something which started now. It was also a feature of the 2008 to 2013 Nationalist government, when – in a bid to calm his unsettled backbenchers – Lawrence Gonzi appointed some MPs as parliamentary assistants,” he said.

“I would say there were conflicts created in those instances, since these parliamentary assistants were assigned roles within certain ministries, and the question arose of whether they were MPs or part of the executive. This was clearly wrong,” he added, “But I’m not saying this to justify what is happening now, and more discussions are needed on this.”

Asked about the same issue, Labour MP Byron Camilleri, also a government member of the Standards committee, similarly said that the matter had to be framed within a broader debate on the role of MPs.

“Such a discussion would include a debate on whether an MP should be a full-timer or not,” Camilleri said, “This was one of Labour’s pledges in the last general election’s manifesto, and I look forward to the debate on the issue.”

He added that the discussion and any eventual decisions should include both government and Opposition MPs.

Attempts were made to contact Nationalist Party MP Simon Busuttil, an Opposition representative on the Standards committee, for his comment on the matter, but these were unsuccessful. PN MP Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, the Opposition’s second representative on the committee was also contacted, but referred the matter to fellow PN MP Karol Aquilina, who could not be reached.