Vella calls for Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Labour MP George Vella yesterday urged the House to appoint a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to oversee the standards of the House, including the ethics of MPs.

Dr Vella was speaking in Parliament during an adjournment in which he and Labour MP Michael Farrugia reacted angrily to claims by Nationalist MP Michael Asciak that they had violated the ministerial code of ethics when they served as ministers. The claims were made by Dr Asciak last week.

Dr Farrugia said Dr Asciak could not give him lessons on the observance of codes of ethics. When he was a doctor in government employ, Dr Asciak used to be granted leave from work to carry out his duties as mayor of Birkirkara, but he had also used that time to see patients privately, and was paid for this.

Both Dr Farrugia and Dr Vella criticised Dr Asciak for his position against what the Nationalist MP had said was undercharging by doctors.

Dr Farrugia said many people were suffering financial hardship because of the policies of the present government and one would hardly have expected a doctor who claimed to be a Christian Democrat to make the remarks Dr Asciak had made. Nothing, Dr Farrugia said, should stop him requesting a small fee, or no fee at all, when his patients had a very low income. He was proud of doing so.

It would have been better for Dr Asciak to have spoken on doctors who demanded high fees from low income people, humiliating hospital conditions, the rising price of medicines and the deteriorating quality of medicines.

Indeed, who was the real target of Dr Asciak's comments?

Dr Vella said that when he was about to be appointed minister, he had made it clear to then Prime Minister Alfred Sant that he wished to continue to see patients. He had seen patients for two hours a day free of charge and he would challenge Dr Asciak to produce any evidence that he had charged anyone. There were people today who made house calls using official cars and were paid for it.

The aim of the code of ethics, as was clear in the text itself, was that private interests should not conflict with ministerial duties. Taking somebody's blood pressure certainly did not conflict with his ministerial duties.

But like Dr Farrugia had said, who was the target of Dr Asciak's remarks? The code of ethics said ministers and parliamentary secretaries should be careful that in their participation in fund raising campaigns they did not put themselves under any obligation. But then everybody had seen ministers trooping out on TV to hand over money they had collected for their party. Wasn't that a violation of the code of ethics? Who had given them this money?

According to the code, a minister was not obliged to dispose of his interests but he could not continue charging and could only receive a fixed return on investment. Did Dr Asciak not know there was someone who in three years declared to have received Lm54,000, claiming it was his share from a profit?

Ministers also had a duty to submit a declaration of assets. But then the government refused to give certain information, such as about the amount ministers spent on mobile phones and on travel.

He was challenging Dr Asciak to be a gentleman and criticise what his own colleagues were doing, Dr Vella said.

When the code of ethics was adopted, it was said that this was being done to strengthen values. Then Dr Fenech Adami had lied about the leader of the opposition for political advantage on the eve of a general election and never apologised. Were these values?

Dr Vella said he was amazed that Dr Asciak had made such comments about him, but then said nothing about the situation at the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU), which he had referred to.

He chose instead to criticise doctors who had a social conscience, accusing them of undercutting, which had negative connotations and implied that something was being done to the detriment of colleagues.

According to the doctors' code of ethics, quoted by Dr Asciak, the minimum fee was 30c. No doctor charged less than 30c. But since when had Dr Asciak become an authority to decide the level and quality of the work of his colleagues? It was this which was lack of ethics.

What Dr Asciak should have done, Dr Vella said, was to appeal against exagerrated fees to the detriment of patients. He used to be taught in Medical School that the duty of doctors was to help the people. Money came later and doctors were not businessmen.

Dr Asciak had complained about doctors who charged 50c, Dr Vella observed.

In an ordinary clinic, a doctor with a normal flow of people saw an average of seven to eight people in one hour. If a doctor charged 50c per patient, he would earn Lm3.50 to Lm4. Using Dr Asciak's reasoning, even his government was undercutting because this (Lm3.75) was the rate being offered to doctors at the outpatients' department at St Luke's.

Clearly there was a need for seriousness in the area of ethics. The current code of ethics was drawn up by the Nationalist government in 1994 but the Labour government in 1997 had brought over Lord Nolan (UK chairman of the Committee on Standrads in Public Life) to Malta to start drawing up a serious code of ethics. There should be a serious structure to ensure that ethics were safeguarded rather than have MPs judge each other, Dr Vella said.