The best way to summarise the manner in which the government has handled the draft legislation on Mepa reform is to dismiss it as baffling, to put it mildly.

We first had a consultation process that dragged on and on only for the Mepa reform conference to bluntly tell the government to go back to the drawing board as seems to be the case now after the hornet's nest within the PN's own ranks vis-à-vis the proposed primary health reform.

We are discussing draft legislation proposing to do away completely with all references to sustainable development provisions in existing law, only to be told something that was never even hinted at during our various consultations with the minister and or his legal team: the government intends to draft a separate Bill to address sustainable development as a stand-alone item.

Hints have been dropped that a whole raft of legal notices are still to follow before this enabling law can be fleshed out and made operational and effective.

We were also told that, as a result of a study commissioned by government itself and chaired by architect David Pace - which inter alia reached the same conclusion that the PL had long reached, that it is time to move on from archaic structure plans to spatial planning (a sentiment, incidentally, also echoed by former Mepa director general, Godwin Cassar) - a lot of outdated and inoperative policies need to be either streamlined or discarded. Logic dictates that this exercise should have been carried out before the draft legislation saw the light of day rather than the other way round.

We have now also come to learn that, at the same time that Mepa continues to lag behind in its statutory obligations to submit timely state of the environment reports and annual updates, the government is formulating a "new" environmental policy.

There is one catch to all this. The minister or, rather, the parliamentary secretary seems to be very reluctant to pin himself down to specific timeframes and or datelines.

The PL is definitely not prepared to endorse a draft Bill that is likely to remain open-ended and, possibly, become effective only when this legislature might be in its death throes, if at all. We have seen this happen in the past when legal notices intended to beef up Mepa enforcement through stronger penalties remained in limbo and in suspended animation for obvious reasons.

We are not prepared to go through the same grinding mill we experienced when endorsing the Climate Report, which, in many instances, was based on wish lists rather than firm commitments.

Short of being presented with a specific implementation plan, we cannot take the government's proposals seriously, no matter how good Mario de Marco's intentions might be, particularly when bearing in mind that, ultimately, the buck stopped and continues to stop with someone else: the Prime Minister, who remains ultimately responsible for Mepa, the environment and sustainable development, no matter how hard he might try to downplay his position in the public eye by trying to assume the deceptive role of a non executive chairman.

One sincerely hopes that by the time the second reading draws to its end in the House on March 20, we will have a categorical and specific government response to the PL's raft of proactive proposals, foremost of which:

a) The call for a separate environmental agency, something that has been long promoted by the highly-respected Church Commission on the Environment.

b) The proposal for an effective parliamentary scrutiny committee modelled on the Public Accounts Committee format, with a chairman nominated by the opposition.

c) The strong suggestion that we should abandon structure plans and move over to spatial planning as has been suggested to the government by its own consultative Policy Review Board.

We also need to know how the Bill proposes to counter the possibility of the power of incumbency being exercised come election time as happened in 2008 when we had flagrant evidence of this, as a result of which: the issuing of planning permits mushroomed in the run up to the election; the number of fresh enforcement notices dried up as the election drew near and refused applications, which, in 2007, totalled 1,190, suddenly shrank noticeably in 2008 as the election fast approached with only 128 refusals in January and February and a meagre 16 refusals in March 2008, only for them to regain their tempo (150 in one month) once the election was over.

It is interesting to note that while the parliamentary secretary has brought up the dubious prospect of "new tensions" to dismiss the idea of a separate planning and environmental agencies, a weak argument that does not hold much water, there has been complete silence on his part so far regarding the strong and effective parliamentary scrutiny committee proposed and the mere notion of spatial planning.

One sincerely hopes that by the time the Prime Minister rises in the House to wind up the otherwise interesting debate on this so-called reform we will know where we really stand, particularly as to whether the Mepa reform is effectively on the road to redemption or perdition!

Mr Brincat is shadow minister for the environment, sustainable development and climate change.

brincat.leo@gmail.com
www.leobrincat.com