Ministerial pay - Auditor sees bad practice but no illegalities
John Dalli refunds honoraria
The Auditor-General said in a report today that the way how the government had added the parliamentary honoraria to ministers' pay by using ministerial funds was not good practice.
The report was published following a request to the Speaker made by an Opposition MP in January.
The auditor said his investigation had attempted to:
"- ascertain whether any illegal misappropriation of public funds was involved and whether the procedure applied was in conformity with financial regulations; and
"- verify the correctness, or otherwise, of the procedure whereby the honoraria of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, as Members of Parliament, was being issued from the respective ministry's vote instead of from the House of Representatives vote."
The auditor said that following various interviews with the key stakeholders, including the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance, the House of Representatives, and the Salaries Section within the Ministry for Gozo, as well as a detailed review of relative exchange of correspondence, mainly e-mail communications, related to this subject, it resulted that:
"1) although, in the opinion of the National Audit Office, best practice demands that relative funds should have been appropriated and subsequently accounted for under a different incidence of charge, no evidence of illegal misappropriation of public funds was found; and
"2) the principle that Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries receive one single payment, incorporating all amounts due to them, per se, cannot be termed as incorrect. However, NAO strongly feels that from an accounting perspective a transfer voucher to charge the Honoraria payments from the respective Ministry's recurrent vote, from where they were charged in the first instance, to the House of Representatives' one should have then been made by all ministries."
For transparency's sake, whilst respecting the need to deal with Cabinet's decisions with the utmost confidentiality, taxpayers should be duly informed of any such increases- Auditor
By way of recommendations, the National Audit Office proposed that:
"(i) similar Cabinet decisions, involving Parliamentary remunerative package, are communicated to the House of Representatives, as used to be done in previous instances, to avoid any potential misunderstanding;
"(ii) in future similar cases, clear and unequivocal instructions are given by the responsible authority to ensure that all Ministries invariably adopt a uniform and standard incidence of charge and consequential accounting procedure;
"(iii) for transparency's sake, whilst respecting the need to deal with Cabinet's decisions with the utmost confidentiality, taxpayers should be duly informed of any such increases; and
"(iv) in order to have in place a reliable audit trail, the procedure whereby Government departments and public entities duly record all documents relative to an issue within an ad hoc Ministerial/Departmental file is to be invariably followed."
The audit office said it had also been informed that former minister John Dalli yesterday refunded the MP's honoraria he had received.
GOVERNMENT REACTION
In a statement, the government said the auditor’s report showed that the allegations of illegalities made by Labour MP Joe Mizzi were unfounded.
It noted that the auditor had concluded that there had been no misappropriation of public funds.
“While the government has recognised that there were mistakes in implementation, the opposition made allegations which have again been shown to be false by the auditor” the government said.
Full report at
http://www.nao.gov.mt/news.aspx?nid=51
See also