The Opposition complained this evening after codes replaced surgeons’ names in a reply given to a parliamentary question.

The question, by Claudio Grech (PN) was about how many operations had been performed by each surgeon at Mater Dei Hospital.

In his reply, Health and Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi gave codes instead of names when he listed how many operations each surgeon had performed.

When Mr Grech demanded an explanation, Parliamentary Secretary for Health Chris Fearne said this was an issue of data protection. The codes were known to the hospital management and the clinical heads, but he did not feel that the names of each surgeon and how much operations each performed should be publicly listed.

The public, he explained, could get the wrong impression, particularly in the case of surgeons whose main duty was not regular operations, but interventions where necessary, hence the small number of operations they performed.

4,704 operations were performed last October and 4,438 in November.

Mr Grech and Claudette Buttigieg (PN) said they saw no reason why the names of each surgeon, and how many operations each had performed, should not be published, once they were paid from taxpayers’money.

When replying to supplementary questions, Dr Fearne said the number of operations performed in October and November last year was 900 more than in the same months in 2012.