George Pullicino, the former resources minister, racked up a bill of €53,744 on mobile phone calls during the previous legislature, Parliament has been told.

In the last 14 months of the Nationalist administration, his bill totalled €9,325.

The information was given by Environment Minister Leo Brincat in reply to a supplementary question by Government Whip Carmelo Abela.

It followed a PQ by Nationalist MP Claudette Buttigieg, who had asked how many people in Mr Brincat’s ministry possessed paid mobile phones and what these were costing. Mr Brincat said it was not easy to compare like with like because of the changes in ministerial responsibilities in the new Cabinet. Without seeming to want to single out Mr Pullicino, he could not include information about Mario de Marco’s Tourism Ministry.

In answer to Ms Buttigieg’s question, he said six people had paid mobile phones in Mr Brincat’s ministry and seven within Roderick Galdes’s parliamentary secretariat.

The total cost to date in the present administration was €21,938.48 for the ministry and €22,031.48 for the parliamentary secretariat.

Answering Mr Abela, Mr Brincat also dealt with “speculative reports” in a section of the media that said his ministry and parliamentary secretariat had spent €1 million on flight tickets alone. He said the report was “totally incorrect and malicious”.

The report maliciously included travel for technical reasons, he added.

Minister Brincat said he had gone overseas on 21 ministerial visits but had declined 38 other invitations. Besides, the report missed the fact that travel on EU business was partly refunded.

His staff had clear instructions that no tickets were to be bought on the strength of fewer than three quotations.