Prof Kevin Aquilina, Dean of the Faculty of Laws, has proposed that the Constitution should include provisions which specify the individual responsibility of ministers.
Prof Aquilina was briefing the parliamentary committee on the Codification of Laws, where he has been making various proposals for amendments to the Constitution and ordinary laws.
On ministerial responsibility, Prof Aquilina said the Constitution currently did not say anything other than that the Cabinet should be collectively responsible to parliament.
He was proposing that ministers should also be individually answerable to parliament for their portfolios and he was also defining what the responsibilities of ministers should be.
Committee chairman Franco Debono noted that individual ministerial responsibility was currently only a matter of convention and was not specified in the Constitution.
Labour MP Jose' Herrera said said individual responsibility should be formally brought in as quickly as possible to avoid situations where ministers hid behind their colleagues.
Prof Aquilina said he was proposing that each minister should be responsible for every action in his ministry over which he had legal, administrative or contractual authority. It shall not be an excuse for the minister to plead that some action would have been carried out without his knowledge, and ministers therefore had to ensure that they were informed of everything that happened within their ministries.
Dr Herrera welcomed this proposal. In Malta, ministers too many times had not assumed their responsibilities. Of course, this did not apply for nitty gritty - one did not expect a minister to resign if a messenger, once only, stole some petrol. But ministers should be responsible for all serious and ongoing issues - as was the corruption case at the VAT Department.
He hoped that the government and parliament would have the courage to adopt this proposal in law.
Dr Zammit Dimech said he was never against affirming the political responsibility of ministers, even though he questioned whether it actually needed to be laid down in writing. Ministerial responsibility was there through the very nature of the appointment of a minister.
Dr Debono said a lot would be achieved in putting down and defining individual ministerial responsibility in writing. Constitutional convention was far too flexible and did not go far enough.
He agreed that it should not be an excuse that ministers were not informed. While one had to be reasonable, ministers had to have in place a system to ensure that there were kept informed.
Dr Zammit Dimech said that before the Interpretation Act was approved by parliament, every discretionary of a civil servant had to be taken by the minister. But after the positive development which came with the Interpretation Act, civil servants could exercise their discretion, and ministers who wanted to overrule this discretion had to do so in writing, explaining their reasons. One now had to be careful that new legislation did not bring back the mentality where everything which a civil servant did had to be blessed by ministers and administrative discretion evaporated and rested only on the politician. That would be wrong.
One also needed to be careful that one did not return to a situation where a minister did not try to find out abuse since that would then boomerang on him.
Prof Aquilina said he was proposing six levels of ministerial responsibility. Ministers did not have to resign for everything that went wrong. In the levels he was proposing, ministers could act by: redirecting questions to the relevant minister, providing all relevant information, providing full explanation, taking remedial action, accepting personal culpability but not necessary resigning, and finally, resigning. Resignation could be tied to a situation where the minister lost the confidence confidence of parliament, or lost the confidence of the prime minister.
Dr Debono asked whether a minister who lost the confidence of the House was currently obliged to resign.
Prof Aquilina said that a minister who lost a confidence vote had, as a matter of good practice, to resign, but the ultimate decision was for the prime minister to either remove that minister or dissolve the House.
Dr Zammit Dimech, when asked by Dr Debono, said he felt a minister should resign if he lost a confidence vote.
LAW COURSE REQUIREMENT CHANGES
Earlier in the sitting, Dr Debono referred to last week's discussion when the issue of a revamp of the law course and the entry requirements was touched upon.
Dr Debono recalled that last July he had asked a parliamentary question on whether law course sentry requirements would be chaged, and he was told that there would not be a change in university entry requirements.
Since then it had been reported that the entry requirements of the law course would, indeed be changed.
He therefore asked Prof Aquilina when this decision was taken.
Prof Aquilina said the decision was taken last month
Dr Debono noted that he had mentioned the need to change the entry requirements when he moved his private member's motion on extensive changes to the justice sector, and he was therefore ticking this off as some thing which had been achieved. The university, he said, had changed its position since his motion was presented.
He was also pleased, Dr Debono said, that the structure of the course would be changed, so that students could focus on the particular sectors they wanted to specialise in, without having to study more than the basics of other sectors. Clearly, he said, things were moving in parliament thanks to his motion.
He also showed appreciation for the fact that the Law Students' Association had welcomed these changes.
Parliament, he said, had a duty to discuss such matters as the highest and most representative forum in the country, although the committee members respected the university's autonomy.