Democratic Party leader Godfrey Farrugia has written to Commissioner of Public Standards George Hyzler requesting an investigation of all parliamentary backbenchers.

In a statement on Friday, PD said MPs' code of ethics was being taken lightly and nothing seemed to happen when it was breached.

PD hoped that the Office of Public Standards would strengthen the integrity and enhance the nation’s trust in its MPs.

“The duty of the backbench, which includes the non-executive members on the side of government, is to scrutinise the workings of the executive. Parliament is dysfunctional. We have a broken system to fix,” MEP candidate Martin Cauchi Inglott said.

MEP candidate Anthony Buttigieg added the country cannot have the highest institution of the state carrying out its objectives by part-time MPs who depend on a salary which is boosted by the executive or government entities.

MEP candidate Camilla Appelgren said a number of backbenchers had various conflicts of interest and that was why the environment was in such a poor state.

While the Speaker had fostered a culture of an open parliament to society and made its administrative procedures autonomous from government, parliament was still hijacked by the dictated agenda of the executive.

Moreover, standing orders required considerable fine tuning. These issues were further compounding the broken system where representative democracy was not delivering.