Ministerial pay hike not spun

The handsome multiple pay increase the Prime Minister and his team gave themselves a few weeks after they were re-elected in 2008 will remain a main political ball in the political arena up to the next general election. The Labour opposition will see to that, repeating not only the size of the increase but the underhand way the Cabinet went about it.

The Prime Minister has come up with an excuse which he, too, is drumming upon, doing so again in his winding up on the Estimates motion. He says that public sector employees elected to Parliament, who in the past had to give up their job, can now retain it. At present, the PM says in a sharp tone, that benefits a number of Labour MPs – why should ministers not be accorded the same treatment?

The argument remains weak and misleading. Some public sector employees, such as university lecturers, could always be MPs and retain their lectureships. That also benefited specific Nationalist MPs, to the advantage of the University, I say. The move to allow all public sector employees (up to a defined grade) to retain their job if they became MPs, in the same way that they already could serve as politically-elected local councillors, was intended as a recognition of democratic rights, not as a premeditated excuse for ministers to start getting an MP’s honoraria on top of the old ministerial salary.

That will not deter the Prime Minister from insisting on his stand – he has a serious political charge to defend and it comes from across party lines, not only the Labour side and its supporters. The PN and Nationalist elements expand the defence by pointing out that the Auditor General has not found anything illegal in the pay increase the PM and his team gave themselves. I, for one, did not think that the increase was illegal. But, was it regular? Was it according to good governance?

These questions take the ministerial pay increase issue beyond the political field.

The government likes to refer to our country as Malta p.l.c., which to an extent it is. Let’s say, then, the Cabinet is the board of directors of a company, and the PM its executive chairman. The board is tasked with the responsibility to ensure good governance. That includes following best practice, not least complete transparency in the taking and implementation of decisions. If it is proved that best practice is not followed the board is held accountable.

Moving on to company procedure, annual accounts are drawn up, which have to be reviewed by auditors, who have to follow strict legal and professional best practices themselves. Every board of directors strives to ensure that its auditors give their company a clean bill of health. If the auditors “qualify” their report that does not reflect at all well on the health of the company and the way it is managed. The shareholders – for whom read the people – have good cause to be worried. As for the company’s bankers, who always require that they are given a copy of the audited accounts, they will look at the company with a much more critical eye when they see the auditors have qualified its accounts.

That is what the Auditor General and the National Audit Office did, in regard to an inquiry carried out not at the request of the PM or his team, but at the discretion of the Auditor General. The inquiry found no evidence of illegal misappropriation of public funds. But it found ample evidence of lack of best practice and transparency in the way the PM and his team gave the pay increase to themselves.

So much so that the National Audit Office felt impelled to make a number of pithy recommendations. These included that Cabinet decisions involving (the) parliamentary remunerative package is communicated to the House of Representatives – “as used to be done in previous instances”. The NAO also felt that, “for transparency’s sake”, taxpayers should be duly informed of any such increases.

The recommendations are confirmation that the House of Representatives, in contrast to past practice, was kept in the dark over the higher pay the Cabinet gave itself. And also that taxpayers, who foot the bill, should be informed directly when such increases are made.

Doublespeak is an old trick in politics. Spin is a newer practice. Neither of them contributes to a serious practice of politics as becomes parliamentarians of a self-respecting democracy. It is surprising as well as worrying that the Prime Minister should himself indulge in them.