The Labour leader did not say the truth when he spoke on the Working Time directive during a debate on timesofmalta.com with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, the Nationalist Party said.

It said in a statement that contrary to what Dr Muscat said, when the directive started being debated in the EP, an amendment was drawn up for European workers not to be allowed to work more than 48 hours each week.

Two of the three Labour MEPs abstained when asked to vote on whether workers should be allowed to choose how much overtime to work themselves.

The Nationalist MEPs, on the other hand, voted for workers to be allowed to take their own decisions.

The PN said this was not the first time in this campaign that the Labour leader tried to twist matters.

An example was when he said that 2,000 jobs were created. The facts were that 7,000 jobs had been created while 2,000 were saved. He had said that the PL’s MEPs had voted correctly on immigration when each of the three voted differently and he was insisting that Malta was a net contributor to the EU when it was a net beneficiary.

Labour was now repeating the old lie that the Nationalist government would not allow free healthcare and had edited an address given by a Nationalist MEP candidate during a meeting with hunters.