It's high time MPs from either side of the House were given a maximum of 15 to 20 minutes of speaking time in parliament, Speaker Anglu Farrugia said today. 

Existing provisions, which grant MPs 40 minutes of speaking time and ministers and shadow ministers an hour and a half to make their point when presenting bill, "don't exist in any parliament in Europe or the Commonwealth," the speaker said. 

He noted that in some parliaments, MPs were fined if they went over their allocated time. "We shouldn't reach that extreme, but something must be done," Dr Farrugia said. 

Dr Farrugia spoke during the annual Sette Giugno commemorative ceremony, held in the Hastings Garden in Valletta.

The government last week launched a six week public consultation seeking suggestions as to where the monument should be permanently housed, with Dr Farrugia saying he had long called for a solution to be found. 

He noted that parliament and the office of the speaker were making inroads to achieving further autonomy. Plans were afoot to add five further research analysts to parliament's administrative team, he said, and he hoped that eventually MPs would receive some form of financial aid to allow them to take on parliamentary assistants. 

Dr Farrugia hoped that a Parliamentary Services Bill would soon become law, thereby granting the speaker's office "complete administrative autonomy," and that a draft bill on standards in public life would move through parliament and into law.