Opposition Whip Joe Mizzi yesterday threatened to “protect” himself against what he called “unacceptable ministerial arrogance” as shown by Resources and Rural Affairs Minister George Pullicino during question time.

The outburst came after Mr Pullicino thrice said he had “nothing to add” to as many specific supplementary questions by Mr Mizzi.

Labour MP Anthony Agius Decelis had asked the minister to say with which sector the government had any debts, and how much each particular sector was owed.

Mr Pullicino had answered that it was in the nature of the ministry’s work to have a number of pending payments to particular sectors for a number of reasons, including mandatory auditing. He asked Mr Agius Decelis to be more specific.

Having asked the question for Mr Decelis, Mr Mizzi asked for more information. When Mr Pullicino said the pending payments he had described should not be considered as debt, Mr Mizzi asked him to disregard the pending payments and state if the government had any debts with particular sectors, and to what extent.

This was where Mr Pullicino started saying repeatedly that he had nothing to add to what he had already said, with Mr Mizzi saying he was asking specific questions. Mr Mizzi added that if the minister did not have the details at hand, he could present them at a subsequent sitting.

Mr Mizzi said this was ministerial arrogance, as also shown in a Parliamentary question he had asked last September, and had only been answered in yesterday’s sitting.

He said he could have asked fellow opposition MPs to rise and leave the chamber and called a quorum – there were 13 government MPs at that moment – but he had other ways of protecting himself against ministerial arrogance.