Claim: The salary discrepancy between what Amanda Muscat earned as a consultant and the work she actually carried out is €16,000.

Verdict: Across the 13 months she was hired as a consultant, Muscat received €23,000 more than she would have had she remained as a private secretary. An OPM spokesperson later said Robert Abela was quoting Muscat's salary net of tax and social security contributions.

The difference between what Amanda Muscat earned as a minister’s private secretary and the salary bump she received when promoted to consultant was €16,000, Robert Abela claimed in an interview with Times of Malta published over the weekend.

Abela was pushing back against the suggestion that Muscat’s €68,000 pay packet was entirely unwarranted, arguing that this wasn’t a case of a phantom job.

Abela said that "the issue is the discrepancy between what she was paid to do as a private secretary and what she was receiving as a consultant," arguing that this amounts to €16,000.

But sifting through the standard commissioner’s report suggests that Abela’s sums don’t quite add up, with Muscat’s pay bump being higher than the €16,000 he suggested.

How much did she earn as a private secretary?

The standard commissioner’s report neatly lays out the timeline of events, showing that she was engaged as a private secretary to then-parliamentary secretary Clayton Bartolo in April 2020.

The report also helpfully includes Muscat’s contract in this role.

It shows that she received a basic salary of €32,170, in line with salary scale five for government workers.

This was topped up by a €4,659 transport allowance and a disturbance allowance of 25% of salary scale 7, which amounted to €7,020 in 2020.

An excerpt from Amanda Muscat's contract as a private secretary. Image: Standards Commissioner

She also received some other perks, such as “free telephone facilities” (although the contract doesn’t tag a specific amount to this).

This means that her yearly income for 2020 would have amounted to €43,849 in 2020, had she worked the whole year.

Had she stayed in that job in 2021, her salary would have risen slightly in line with increases to the government’s salary scales, with both her basic salary and disturbance allowance crawling up by a few hundred euros each, while her transport allowance would have stayed the same.

So, in practice, she would have pocketed €44,847 in 2021, had she remained a private secretary.

But fate (and two Cabinet ministers) intervened to promote Muscat to policy consultant in November 2020, first in the tourism ministry and, later, in the Gozo ministry.

Amanda Muscat with tourism minister Clayton Bartolo. Photo: Facebook

How much did she make as a policy consultant?

Again, the standard commissioner’s report clearly lays out how much Muscat received as a consultant at both ministries.

It shows that she received a bump of €8,000 in her annual basic salary, which rose from the previous roughly €32,000 to just over €40,000.

It’s unclear whether the discrepancy highlighted by Abela - €16,000 – refers to the increase in her basic salary across 2020 and 2021, the two years involved in the affair. But, if that is the case, it does not take additional benefits into account.

Muscat also kept the same transport allowance as before (€4,659) but received an additional communications allowance of €815 and a €2,000 expense allowance.

Most controversially, she was also handed an expertise allowance that, according to government manuals, is only given in “exceptional cases”.

Muscat was first given a €15,000 expertise allowance when first becoming a consultant at the tourism ministry, only to have this increased to the maximum €20,000 when she moved to the Gozo ministry a few months later.

This means that her total annual salary in 2021 was of €67,657.

So, what’s the discrepancy?

In practice, the difference between her salary as a consultant in 2021 (€67,657) and what she would have earned during that same year had she remained a private secretary (€44,847) is €22,810.

Muscat ultimately spent 13 months as a consultant, between November 2020 and December 2021. This means that, pro-rata, she is likely to have pocketed somewhere in the region of €71,000 throughout that period, with a monthly wage around the €5,500 mark before tax.

This is roughly €23,000 more than she would have received as a private secretary during this same period.

Where did Abela get the €16,000 figure from?

A spokesperson at the Office of the Prime Minister told Times of Malta that when Abela mentioned the €16,000 figure, he was quoting Muscat's net salary, with taxes and social security contributions deducted. 

In net terms, the discrepancy in salary was of €16,400, the spokesperson said. The spokesperson confirmed that discrepancy in gross terms was of €23,026. 

The standards commissioner's report - and all public sector pay scales - list salaries in gross, not net values.

Verdict

The standard commissioner’s report shows that Muscat’s basic salary received an annual €8,000 bump, but she also received several other allowances that she did not previously get.

This includes a €20,000 expertise allowance that is usually only granted in exceptional cases.

Across the 13 months in which she was engaged as a policy consultant, Muscat is likely to have received roughly €23,000 more than she would have received in her previous role as a private secretary.

The claim is therefore false, as the evidence clearly refutes the claim.

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