The public sector is far bigger in size than the central government, including as it does local government, state corporations, authorities, the University and companies. Consequently, the annual budget of revenue and expenditure presented by the Minister of Finance in the last quarter of each year covers only part of the outlays made on behalf of the public.

All outlays have to be financed. These include central government expenditure on the recurrent and capital account, as well as advances made to the rest of the public sector. This segment of public expenditure all too often represents substantial net financing by the central government. Notable exceptions are the Central Bank and the Malta Financial Services Authority, both of which pay handsome amounts to the Exchequer each year after covering their own financing requirements.

Outlays made by the central government, whether on its own account or to the rest of the public sector, have to be financed, as we all painfully know, out of the various sources of direct and indirect taxation. Full details of tax collected are given yearly in the annual budget on an estimated basis. Up-to-date figures are given on a monthly basis in the return of revenue and expenditure. We have to wait a few weeks, maybe months, into the new year for the final figure for December and thus the outgoing year to be given.

Once the final figures are issued we all know exactly where the Exchequer stood at the end of the year. Invariably to date, it stands at a deficit position. The deficit varies according to expenditure and revenue trends during the year, and according to special outlays or receipts, such as those made to entice workers to leave the dockyard (outlays) and one-off revenue from the privatisation process (the shipyard can once again be used as an example).

The running total of the central government's deficits over the year are represented by the national debt, which is fast approaching the €4 billion mark, almost €100,000 per head. Like the structural deficit (that is, after removing the effect of one-off receipts from the annual financial outturn), that does not leave us with leeway in regard to the Maastricht Criteria, by which we are bound in view of our membership of the European Union. Nevertheless we are not at all out of line as the stricken countries in the eurozone (like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Italy) and beyond it (the United Kingdom).

That comfort is relative. We still have to be hawk-eyed in regard to our expenditure. For one thing the position is less calming than first reading makes it out to be. That has been pointed out, with details, yet again by the Labour shadow minister of finance, Charles Mangion. For another thing we cannot continue to run a growing public debt indefinitely. Public debt may be, and is, rolled over. But its financing remains and the interest burden is growing, even though the Treasury seeks to take advantage of the current regime of low interest rates by lengthening the duration of the debt with those parts of it which come up for renewal.

Even if we had no public debt at all, or one of a much smaller amount, due attention has to be paid for the government to collect all revenues due to it, which is to an extent outside its control because of tax evasion, and to the outlays made, where efficiency and efficacy in spending is, indeed, within the hands of a prudent government.

All this necessary good governance, in turn, requires proper oversight to ensure that full accountability is always in place. That is an important tenet not only of financial prudence, but of democracy itself. A properly working democracy requires that there be no taxation without representation. This, through a direct line of reasoning in turn requires that there be no spending without proper oversight by the people's democratically elected representatives, in particular the opposition, given that government backbenchers generally tend to loathe embarrassing their government with overly sharp probing.

It is sad to say that parliamentary oversight is being reduced. In recent weeks the government deliberately took steps not to allow the budget of Transport Malta, our massive and sprawling transport authority, to continue to be debated in the House of Representatives. Criticised by the opposition the Minister of Finance replied weakly that there were other public bodies whose finances are no longer debated in the full House, and that the opposition could always ask for a discussion in the Public Accounts Committee, chaired by an opposition MP.

As the first chairman of that committee I suggest to the good minister to stop spouting cattle manure and not persist, as the Prime Minister is doing with the White Rocks project, the latest example, to treat the people as witless. It is impossible for the Public Accounts Committee to discuss at length the accounts of each component of the rest of the public sector. And anyway, full scrutiny and debate is the right of the whole House of Representative, of the opposition and self-respecting government backbenchers.

This particular gnawing of the democratic process in its full sense is gathering pace at an alarming rate.