House sitting, committee meeting put off

Yesterday evening's parliamentary sitting was adjourned at 6.25 p.m. for lack of quorum.

The call for quorum was made by Labour MP Joe Mizzi during question time. There were 14 MPs in the House, of whom one was from the opposition. The quorum is of 16.

The House had been due to resume its debate on a bill amending the Immigration Act. The debate will now continue on Monday.

A planned meeting of the House Business Committee was not held after the government members stayed away. The committee had been due to discuss a private member's motion moved by the Opposition to amend the constitution, the General Elections Act and the Citizenship Act.

While the Speaker, as chairman of the committee, waited 10 minutes for the government MPs to show up, Mr Mizzi said loudly that this was a threat to democracy. He proposed that the committee should meet in January 2004 in terms of standing orders. The Speaker made no comment.

Standing orders provide that when there is no quorum within 10 minutes of the time when a committee is due to meet, the chairman shall appoint a date and time for the next meeting within the following week.

The committee will meet on Monday, informed sources said.

The Labour parliamentary group said in a statement that the fact that the committee meeting was not held reflected government arrogance which was undermining democracy.

The government parliamentary group said the opposition had disrupted the parliamentary sitting, a day after much of the time of another sitting was lost when the opposition sought to move a motion which was not urgent. It was thus the opposition which was not interested in parliament and was wasting time.

The group also published a list which, it said, showed the exaggerated number of Opposition MPs who were absent from parliamentary sittings.

The list covers 19 sittings since May 27. The highest number of absent Opposition MPs was 27 yesterday, 21 on June 19 and 18 on June 18. There are 30 Opposition MPs.

A meeting of the committee for the consideration of bills was held as usual yesterday.