Criminals are being cleared of charges brought against them because of a technicality, and the Minister of Justice is politically responsible, Labour's Justice spokesman Jose Herrera said today.

Addressing a press conference in front of the Law Courts, Dr Herrera said that criminals were being cleared of charges brought against them because when they were investigated by the police and their statement was taken they did not have access to a lawyer.

This problem, he said, had been brewing since 1995 when there was the first such case in Europe.

Malta, he said, had waited until 2002 to enact a law in this regard and then waited a further eight years to put into force the right of a suspect to consult his lawyer prior to interrogation.

But the Justice Ministry said in a statement issued this afternoon that the right of a person to a lawyer during police interrogation was recognsied by the European Court of Human Rights following a number of judgements given between 2008 and 2009.

Before this time, this right had not been definitely accepted.

Malta, through a law approved by Parliament in 2002, this right was introduced subject to an inference regulation. Part of the articles were not brought into affect and there was tacit agreement on this between the two sides, so much so that no one from the Opposition raised this point in the past legislature.

The article, the ministry said, came into effect on February 10, 2010. In April this year, the Constiuttional Court declared this a legal right in three judgements.

There had been no previous constitutional judgement. The Court, the ministry said, did not say that the criminal procedures in the three said cases should stop or that the people involved should automatically be given freedom, or that  their statements should be ignored.

Dr Herrera had said in the morning that it was unfair for the authorities to criticise lawyers for raising these cases in court because on being granted their warrant lawyers took an oath to represent their clients in the best way possible.

"The fact that the justice minister is also home affairs minister is creating a conflict with regards to priorities," he said.

The spokesman said that as a result of this shortcoming, a number of trials and criminal cases were being stalled with the possibility of people being cleared because of a technicality.

Asked why the PL had not raised the issue before, Dr Herrera said the opposition had raised the matter in Parliament in 2002 when even the Chamber of Advocates had made its position known.

More recently, even Nationalist MP Franco Debono had criticised the matter.

Labour's Home Affairs spokesman, Michael Falzon, said it seemed that the solution being provided by the police to this problem was to start tapping left right and centre without going through the judicial review or the security services.

Eventually, he said, there should come a time when the prosecution was not the police but a unit in which the police only be witnesses.

The ministry said that this year, the police force was being given state-of-the-art DNA analysis and an automatic fingerprint identification system machines.

In a year, the police force had also implemented the law on a person's access to a lawyer during interrogation in the arrest of 2,994 people.

Although all these people were offered these right, it was only used by 709, the ministry said.