Four days after The Times reported that in May 2008 ministers had awarded themselves an additional €6,000 pay rise, over and above their “double pay”, the Nationalist Party said this was no scoop.

The Times reported last Friday that ministers retained a weekly pay rise of about €500 a week not, as the PN claimed in January, €367. This is because besides keeping their MP’s honorarium they also increased their duty allowance by some €6,000.

In January, the government had tabled Cabinet minutes showing ministers were getting a duty allowance of 20 per cent of their pay but the government did not supply the old figure, which was €2,329, even when asked for it.

When The Times recently reported that Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat had remained without his MP’s honorarium (which he was promised and pledged to charity), it asked the government for a breakdown of the pre-2008 pay packets and the present rates but the figures never arrived.

The PN now says: “The Times wrote a story which claimed ministers and parliamentary secretaries were given an increase beyond the amounts discussed six months ago. This is not the case. The amounts being bandied about as if they were some scoop were included in the information presented to Parliament way back in January 2011.”Nationalist MP Jean-Pierre Farrugia, told The Sunday Times that MPs, like the public, had no way of knowing that the duty allowance of ministers had been increased because no information was ever forthcoming about the old amount and how it compared to the new one.

The PN did not explain why Dr Muscat had been denied his honorarium, a basic salary increase and a higher allowance, which, according to the figures presented in January, he was owed.

About this, the PN said: “It should be noted that Dr Muscat has gone on record to say he doesn’t want the money. If he doesn’t want the money, isn’t it better that it remains with the taxpayer rather than be used to subsidise the Labour Party?”