The Opposition on Wednesday formally gave notice of a motion to change the composition of the parliamentary standards committee so that its majority would no longer be formed of MPs.
A bill announced by Opposition Leader Bernard Grech also seeks to clarify current legislation by stating that the Standards Commissioner and the parliamentary standards committee may also investigate former ministers and MPs, and not just serving ones.
Grech had first suggested the change in the composition of the standards committee when he spoke in parliament on Monday.
The committee is currently chaired by the Speaker of the House and has two members each from the government and the opposition.
On Monday, during an emergency debate, Speaker Anglu Farrugia was criticized by the Opposition for invariably casting his vote for the government when there was a tie in the standards committee, letting politicians easily off the hook when they are found in breach of ethics by the standards commissioner.
"Worse than that, sometimes they are even protected," insisted MP Karol Aquilina, who drafted the bill together with MP Therese Comodini Cachia.
The opposition is proposing that while the committee should continue to be composed of five members, only two should be MPs, one each from the government and the opposition. The other three members should be nominated with the support of a two-thirds majority of the House, with one of them serving in the chair.
"This way we may rest assured that these persons of integrity will work solely for the common good of the country," Grech told a press conference.
Earlier in summer, the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, George Hyzler, found Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar in breach of parliamentary ethics, after she failed to declare a €46,000 brokerage fee which the commissioner concluded she probably took from a property deal involving Yorgen Fenech.
The standards committee endorsed his report but while the opposition MPs wanted Cutajar to be suspended from the House for a month, government MPs said a stern reprimand should be sufficient. The Speaker voted with the government MPs.
The Opposition later complained that what should have been a stern reprimand was only a letter informing Cutajar about the parliamentary committee’s decision against her.
PN deputy leader David Agius observed on Wednesday that while the opposition first suggested the changes to the standards committee on Monday, the prime minister had not reacted yet.
"We need to hear the government's reaction, so we may improve our bill, if needs be," he said.
Grech said an effective standards committee was needed so that all MPs could be held to account for any wrongdoing.
On the clause in the bill on investigations against former ministers and MPs, Karol Aquilina pointed out that last January, the standards committee was in a situation where the Speaker refused to allow it to summon Joseph Muscat to be questioned on his role in the granting of a tourism consultancy contract to Konrad Mizzi, because, the speaker ruled, Muscat was no longer an MP.
MP Robert Cutajar said ministers are frequently absent from parliamentary sittings when they are supposed to answer parliamentary questions, and that some questions remain unanswered altogether, sometimes even after the opposition tabled them five times. This was another example of how parliament's duty to scrutinise the government was being undermined.