PN General Secretary Paul Borg Olivier said this morning that he had written to the Data Protection Commissioner asking him to investigate the way the PL was collecting information about the people, particularly information which was health-related.

Dr Borg Olivier, reacting to the current controversy over an e-mail he had sent to ministries about data sharing, insisted that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

The PN, he insisted, had a duty to ensure that the government remained close to the people and that all people – whatever their political colour – who complained to ministries were heard and their complaints were acted upon.

Similarly, should anyone complain to the Nationalist Party, the party had a duty to give that information to the government and expect it to be acted upon. The people had to come first.

The PL, he said, had still not shown where, in his e-mail, he had said that government information should be given to the PN.

Dr Borg Olivier said the process it had started would be continued because the people had to be heard throughout the legislature, and not just six months before the general election. The process would always respect the law, including the Data Protection Act.

This, he said, had nothing to do with espionage. The PL, however, had burst a bubble of hypocrisy, because its own code of ethics on home visits laid down that when its officials visited people who did not back the party, they should, on leaving their houses, gather what information they could from neighbours. Such information, he said, was to include information on mental and bed-ridden patients. Such medical information, Dr Borg Olivier said, could only be held by suitably qualified people in the health sector, and he had therefore written to the Data Protection Commissioner to lodge a complaint.

During the same activity, Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg said that now that the Brigata Laburista was being disbanded, he hoped that properties it had taken through requisition orders would be returned to the people.