When there has been so much talk about corruption claims over the past few weeks, it is somewhat surprising that the Labour Party's set of proposals to fight corruption has generated so little national interest and so little analysis, if at all, even by politicians who have been at the forefront of the campaign for greater transparency and good governance. Such lack of interest is glaring when considering that national perception of corruption has increased, not decreased.

This may well be due to the people's general weariness of the way corruption claims are tackled by politicians. Yet, the number of cases brought up this year is enough to justify a fully-fledged national discussion on ways to, first, raise greater alertness to possibilities of corruption at all levels of public administration and, second, to strengthen the mechanisms already in place to check it in time.

Human nature being what it is, there will always be people who would find ways to corrupt public officials, or to defraud the system, however strong it may appear to be, as experience has shown only too well. Even so, it is unwise to dismiss corruption claims as merely intended to win political mileage for the party making them, even though this may very well be the case.

According to official figures given almost two years ago, only three of the 378 cases submitted to the Permanent Commission Against Corruption, which was set up in 1988, had been proven. The Labour Party has not been happy with the situation, with one Labour MP, Josè Herrera, making it clear that, for years on end, his party had been insisting that the relative institutions in place to fight corruption were either not in a position to deliver or were simply refraining from doing so.

On its part, the government has said that a parliamentary select committee had been set up to discuss and propose initiatives to strengthen the Permanent Commission Against Corruption and the Ombudsman's office. In a bid to fight tax evasion, for example, the government was also amalgamating the Inland Revenue Department, the VAT and the Customs and excise departments. All this is to the good but there is certainly no harm in extending further the network of the means available to check corruption and fraud.

But, as already remarked, Labour is not satisfied with what has been done so far and has come out with its own set of proposals.

The first would be the granting of protection to individuals or companies collaborating in investigations of corruption by giving new information of political involvement, even if they, too, would have been involved in such cases. The party has promised that, if elected, it would also give stronger investigative powers to the Auditor General, particularly when witnesses do not collaborate with him, as has been the case, in one or two instances, in the investigation over the extension of the Delimara power station.

Another interesting proposal is that calling for the appointment of a parliamentary commissioner for standards in public administration to oversee the behaviour of ministers and MPs and ensure that conflicts of interests are declared.

These and other proposals should not be dismissed out of hand simply because they are made by the Labour Party. However, as The Times has already pointed out, Labour would also have to play its part to the full in the effort to check corruption by reporting claims in time.