‘Laws must be consolidated’

Police Commissioner John Rizzo yesterday threw his weight behind the need for a consolidation of laws, saying legislation was so dispersed that the police needed a “torch” to find what they were looking for.

Mr Rizzo was speaking before the House Committee for the Consolidation of Laws, which is discussing the consolidation of criminal laws and criminal procedure.

Replying to questions by committee chairman Franco Debono, Mr Rizzo said he missed the old Code of Police Laws.

“I remember well the time when we had the Code of Police Laws. Despite its defects, we knew where to find the laws we needed. We learnt it section by section.”

Laws were now dispersed in various acts, including the ones that regulated the Malta Tourism Authority, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and local councils. This made it difficult to determine who was responsible for what, such as in one-off activities, teen parties and places of entertainment.

To complicate matters, local councils could enact their own by-laws. Therefore, one could have a situation of 65 different laws to regulate, say, hawkers with regard to distances, dimensions, times, etc.

“We will end up phoning mayors to find out what the laws are,” Mr Rizzo said.

Attorney General Peter Grech said that while he acknowledged what Mr Rizzo was saying, it was difficult to codify all the penal laws unless one wanted to end up with a huge document that would cause the same problems being experienced now.

He also underlined that while codification was important it was just as essential that court procedures were improved to ensure that people got justice without delay.

Dr Debono said one decision that needed to be taken was whether the drug laws should be part of the Criminal Code.

Lawyer Lara Lanfranco noted that, in the case of human trafficking, there were provisions in the Criminal Code and others in the White Slave Traffic Ordinance, where there was sometimes overlapping of provisions. She had in fact drafted a law to consolidate the laws and modernise them according to EU requirements.

Nationalist MP Francis Zammit Dimech said that while it was difficult to codify everything, one could identify areas that could be brought together under various titles such as drugs, human trafficking, the environment and procedural rules. The committee could then follow the same process it followed for the codification of administrative law. At least, if one could not have the old Code of Police Laws, one would have an index where to look up the laws.

At the end of the meeting, the Police Commissioner said that he also wished to discuss how two people accused separately of the same sort of crime were got a different sentence. One was jailed for 10 years and another, who cooperated with the police, was jailed for 12. There was also a need, he said, for laws to define morality, to ensure that, for example, children aged 17 would not have access to gentlemen’s clubs.