Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg yesterday denied that the government was showing any lack of confidence in magistrates through the Bill amending the Criminal Code.
Speaking in Parliament, he said that an amendment requiring authorisation by the Chief Justice for magistrates to carry out inquiries that did not stem from a report by the Attorney General or the police was meant to remove the possibility of abuse. The government was prepared to consider amendments to this clause as long as this purpose was achieved.
Dr Borg also insisted that a three-month restriction being introduced on the granting of bail for repeat offenders was not an absolute prohibition and did not go against the European Human Rights Convention.
Dr Borg said he smiled whenever the Opposition claimed that the government was showing lack of confidence in magistrates.
For in the same Bill, the government was giving magistrates the discretion to decide whether or not to imprison persons convicted of sharing a small amount of drugs, whereas to date such a conviction carried a mandatory jail term.
It was worth recalling, however, that Jose' Herrera, the Labour MP who had been most vociferous in the criticism of the government in this debate, had voted against a Bill giving magistrates discretion over whether or not to imprison persons found guilty of importing a small amount of drugs for personal use, even though he later wrote in favour of that measure.
Reacting to the criticism made over the authorisation which magistrates would require in the holding of some inquiries, Dr Borg said inquiries which did not stem from a report by the Attorney General or the police were very rare. Furthermore, authorisation was to be required from the Chief Justice, the most senior member of the judiciary, not some minister.
The purpose of this amendment was to avoid abuses because inquiries could not be fishing expeditions, more so as in Malta people could be investigated without their knowledge. Inquiries were meant to freeze evidence whenever a crime or a serious accident took place.
One could not have inquiries conducted on the basis of somebody writing a letter. There were other forms of action in such cases.
Still the government was not restricting the possibility of inquiries being held on the basis of a private report. It was legislating to avoid abuse. This clause could be amended as long as its purpose was achieved.
As for the restrictions to the immediate granting of bail, Dr Borg said one should note that this only applied to people who were accused of serious crime after having been found guilty of another serious crime in the previous 10 years. The Bill was defining what constituted serious crime, including crimes punishable by nine years imprisonment or more and other cases such as paedophilia.
Although the presumption of innocence remained, one could not stretch this concept too much. By that yardstick, there would be no one in prison awaiting trial. Surely restricting the automatic right to bail for three months for repeat offenders accused of serious crime could not be considered as going against this presumption, he explained.
Furthermore, Dr Borg said, this was not an absolute ban on the possibility of bail. The accused could file an application for bail before the criminal court from day one of the compilation proceedings.
Magistrates would also retain the right to consider any applications over whether the arrest of the accused was legal and when a person was found to have been arrested illegally, he would be released.
This issue, Dr Borg said, had nothing to do with confidence in the magistrates. In the past a person accused of murder could not be granted bail. Did that constitute lack of confidence?
A Labour government had also introduced a total prohibition of bail for 20 days in drugs cases. This was later overturned by the European courts. But had it reflected lack of confidence?
How could such an amendment be said to be fascist because it restricted the possibility of bail to repeat offenders who had committed serious crime such as sexual abuse on children?
The opposition was very vocal in its criticism of the government over crime, yet it was now criticising the government for taking action that would help the police, for nothing discouraged them more than seeing an accused repeat offender walk out of court.
Furthermore, this government had a long track record of protecting the rights of the accused including the way how police searches and arrests were made, the method of interrogation, preventive arrest, and the police complaints system.
Human rights, however, did not involve just the rights of the accused but the rights of everybody.
On the removal of the mandatory requirement of corroboration of the evidence of an accomplice, Dr Borg said he agreed that evidence by an accomplice had to be treated with caution, but he did not agree that such evidence should be rejected out of hand even when there could be circumstances when such evidence should be considered.
At this point Opposition leader Alfred Sant protested that the minister had exceeded his speaking time but had not been stopped by the Chair.
Dr Borg said it was his understanding that there was agreement that he could continue. Furthermore, at one time last week the debate was suspended for five minutes until Opposition MP Joe Brincat arrived in the House to speak. With no opposition MP present at the time, he could easily have wrapped up the debate.
Dr Sant said there was never an agreement for the minister to continue to speak and the government always refused requests for extensions when opposition MPs wished to continue speaking.
The Bill was then given a second reading.
Other speakers will be reported tomorrow.