The Nationalist Opposition this morning presented an official request to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to investigate the withdrawal of a court case instituted by the Lands Department against Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party on some 10,000 square meters of property in St Andrews.

Dubbing this episode as “a scandal of the first order”, PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami said that if the government did not have anything to hide on this issue, it should have no difficulty agreeing to the request.

Last month, the Lands Department notified the court that it was withdrawing a case initiated against the Labour Party for not respecting the conditions tied to the use of the Pembroke property granted to Labour in 1979. The department was acting on government instructions.

Lands had instituted the case in 2010 after various warnings were given to the Labour Party to keep the historical property in a good condition as stipulated by the contract.

Following the change of government, the department intervened to withdraw the case.

Dr Fenech Adami said that the government had a lot of explaining to do including regarding who, from the government, decided to instruct the Commissioner for Lands to drop the case.

Asked on this point earlier this week, Parliamentary Secretary Michael Farrugia, who is responsible for the department, refused to take responsibility for this decision and said that “the decision was taken by the government as a whole”.

Decisions on the agenda of the PAC are normally agreed by consensus.

The PN’s spokesman for the planning authority, Ryan Callus, asked whether the recent decision by the authority to include Pembroke in its policy on tall buildings was related to Labour’s property in the area.