In the Talking Point titled ‘The administration of justice’ (November 6), shadow justice minister Jason Azzopardi said, among other things, that “Statistics, like circumstantial evidence, do not lie but may deceive. We have been told not with insignificant fanfare that there was an 11 per cent reduction in the backlog of pending cases. I repeatedly asked the [justice] minister to publish a detailed breakdown of this and to show how he reached this conclusion. To date, no such information has been provided.”

In fact, the Minister of Justice, Culture and Local Government, Owen Bonnici, tabled in Parliament on October 26 (after Dr Azzopardi had sent his piece to the Times of Malta but before it was published) detailed background and an explanation of how the 11 per cent reduction was reached.

Because of an oversight, the article was not updated by this newspaper prior to publication. The error is regretted.