The government is proposing that an opposition MP would be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. This was suggested to Alfred Sant, as Leader of the Opposition, and Charles Mangion, acting Labour Party leader, during a meeting they had with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi on Monday. The government is linking the proposal to an agreement on pairing.
It is also suggesting that the Deputy Speaker and the chairman of committees would be chosen from among government MPs.
The opposition is, however, proposing that the government should re-appoint former Speaker Anton Tabone and former Deputy Speaker Carmelo Abela for a two-month period until the new Labour Party leadership is elected.
The government said yesterday its proposal regarding the appointment of a Speaker and other matters were made to Dr Sant during a meeting that was kept confidential at the opposition's request. However, since the MLP issued a statement on the meeting, the government felt it should announce what was going on in the discussions.
The government said its other proposals were to introduce the Prime Minister's Question Time in a sitting every two weeks, for parliamentary sittings to start being held on Tuesday mornings and evenings and Wednesday mornings with all votes taken at the end of Wednesday's sittings.
So far Parliament used to sit on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
The government proposed that the five minutes established in the regulation on a quorum would be extended to half an hour and that a quorum would only be called at the beginning of the sitting, during question time.
The government proposed the funding of up to 10 analysts/researchers for the two parliamentary groups - five for the government and five for the opposition - who would be Parliament employees and who would work in Parliament but be exclusively dedicated to the group that chooses them. The Labour parliamentary group said it met on Monday to consider the government's proposals and decided it would consider pairing on a case by case basis. This would be done until the party's new leadership and its parliamentary group took a regular position on the subject.
It said that, within two months, the parliamentary group would be ready to formulate a set of proposals to improve the administration of Parliament.
The group also agreed that, until the end of June, the main spokesmen and those spokesmen who shadowed ministers in the past legislature would continue to do so.