Government acted “most arrogantly” when it decided to go ahead with the lease of St Philip’s Hospital despite a majority of MPs in Parliament calling for an urgent debate, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday.

Speaking to supporters in Xgħajra, he said the Government wanted the hospital lease to be signed immediately because of the acute shortage of beds for rehabilitation.

This, he said, was an admission of the Government’s failure in the health sector.

The Government had spent 15 years and more than €600 million (practically double the original estimate) to build Mater Dei Hospital, and was now saying it needed another one, after just four years. By comparison, St Luke’s Hospital had served for 70 years before a new hospital was needed. However, the incident also showed the need to modernise the parliamentary system, Dr Muscat said.

While parliamentary approval was sometimes required to give an unused room to a village club, none was needed for the signing of this deal, which would cost at least €12 million.

Faced with such situations, one could not blame the people for losing their trust in politics. Responsibility, Dr Muscat said, had to be shouldered by those who took the decisions.

He said the Government’s urgency now that an election was approaching destroyed its credibility in the health sector, which had been characterised by financial and planning mismanagement.

Dr Muscat said he did not care who owned St Philip’s Hospital (former PN executive president Frank Portelli), and was only interested in what was best for the people.

Meanwhile, Dr Muscat welcomed the naming of Valletta as European Culture Capital 2018 and confirmed that a new Labour government would make all the necessary resources available for the bid to leave behind a legacy that would go further than 2018.

Responding to Dr Muscat’s speech, the Health Ministry accused Dr Muscat of not knowing the difference between a main hospital and a hospital for rehabilitation.

It added that the Government acted seriously and had given information to Parliament in 2010 when it made a call for interest.

The Government was also opening the process to scrutiny from the country’s institutions.