Government parliamentary whip Glenn Bedingfield has lashed out at the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life in the wake of his decision to reject a call to investigate Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi for “abusing parliamentary immunity”.

“By his decision Commissioner George Hyzler is weakening his own office and the powers vested in him by law,” Bedingfield said in parliament on Tuesday.

Last week the Labour MP who as whip coordinates the Labour parliamentary group, requested the investigation, claiming that remarks by Azzopardi in parliament on possible collusion for the conversion of a jail term over fraud into a fine had cast a shadow on the integrity of Judge Consuelo Scerri Herrera who had presided the case.

Bedingfield’s request was rejected within hours by the Standards Commissioner on the grounds that such complaints on the conduct of MPs in the House were outside his remit and fell under the responsibility of the Speaker.

Bedingfield accused Hyzler of shirking responsibility.

“If such a matter does not fall within the responsibility of the Standards Commissioner what is the purpose of the Office,” the government whip asked.

“If this is the case, under what authority is the commissioner investigating the declarations of assets which are submitting directly to the Speaker,” he questioned.

Bedingfield insisted his call was not to investigate the merits of the claims made by Azzopardi but the latter’s conduct “to cast a shadow on third parties” who had no opportunity to seek redress as parliamentary immunity protected MPs from libel proceedings.

The Labour MP also took a dig at Hyzler in the wake of the latter’s recent investigation into use of public resources by members of Cabinet to run their personal Facebook account. The commissioner had found that Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg, Environment Minister Aaron Farrugia, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri and Finance Minister Edward Scicluna all incorrectly used public resources. The commissioner said it was an abuse for ministers to use public funds to create material for their personal social media pages.  

“Can somebody explain why the commissioner is conducting month-long investigations on the use of Facebook, but declining to investigate abuse of parliamentary immunity?” he asked.

He said the very fact that his request had been rejected within hours implied the commissioner had not delved into his request at all.

“We need a commissioner to raise standards and apply them equally and across the board,” Bedingfield concluded.