Bill sets up Administrative Review Tribunal

A Bill to consolidate, streamline and instil uniformity in the procedures of the various administrative tribunals started being debated by Parliament yesterday.

Parliamentary Secretary Carm Mifsud Bonnici told the House that this Bill was far-reaching and its clauses would be introduced gradually.

The Bill lists 57 administrative tribunals set up in terms of primary legislation and a further 13 set up by subsidiary legislation.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said most of these bodies would eventually be brought together under a Tribunal of Administrative Review but this process would take time to ensure that this new tribunal functioned efficiently.

He said tribunals had five distinct advantages over the law courts. They provided expert knowledge by going into the details of technical aspects and present-day government policies and best practices; procedures before these tribunals were cheap and decisions were taken in a short time; An administrative tribunal, which did not have any backlog, was also flexible and could vary its line of decision as it was not bound by precedents. The last advantage was informality, as the procedure was not as rigid as that adopted by the courts.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said, however, that as the number of tribunals mushroomed, problems had ensued.

The same had happened in the UK and a specially-appointed commission had recommended the creation of a Council of Tribunals which would act as a watchdog. The council was empowered to take any action where a tribunal was not functioning well.

This Bill aimed at centralisation through the Administrative Review Tribunal that would ensure uniformity of decisions which would also be accessible publicly.

Various principles of good administrative behaviour would henceforth apply to all tribunals. For instance, all administrative tribunals had to respect the parties' right to a fair hearing, including the principles of natural justice. The time within which an administrative tribunal had to take its decision should be reasonable in the light of the circumstances of each case. All administrative tribunals have to ensure that there was procedural equality between the parties and each party should be given an opportunity to present its case.

An administrative tribunal should ensure that the public administration made available information and documents relevant to each case. Proceedings before a tribunal had to be adversarial in nature, except where provided by law, and proceedings have to be held in public. Reasons had to be given for the judgment although it would not be necessary for the tribunal to go into much detail.

Opposition Justice spokesman Anglu Farrugia said the opposition agreed with this Bill but would raise various concerns in the committee stage. A question which had to be asked, he said, was whether there should be an Administrative Review Tribunal or whether, as the opposition felt, there should be of an ordinary court presided by a judge, with the safeguards which that provided including independence.

Indeed, even the Council for the Administration of Justice had voiced its concern over the creation of the various tribunals which were taking over from the ordinary courts.

Another issue was the need for decisions by tribunals to be enforced, something which was not always the case, especially with regard to the Injustices Tribunal.

Dr Farrugia said that the opposition had long been complaining over the way how certain courts to be disbanded or fragmented, a situation which had reduced the credibility of the court. Indeed, now one even had a situation where even members of the judiciary, such as Magistrate Dennis Montebello that very morning, had filed an application in court to safeguard his rights.

The public's questions had to be answered, even in the case of the tender awarded to Special Cleaners Ltd for the cleaning of the law courts, despite its links with a convicted criminal.

Was it true that this company was being paid regularly for services even before this tender was awarded? If, as would appear, the government had known the facts about this company, then it was an accomplice to the fact.

The opposition would have liked to have seen a magisterial inquiry into this case, but now that was virtually impossible because of the way the government had changed the law on the holding of inquiries.