Silvio Schembri spared ethics rap over ministry staff doing constituency work

Silvio Schembri had taxpayer-funded persons of trust doing constituency work but there is not enough evidence to conclude he systematically breached ethics codes, parliament’s standards commissioner has concluded.

The report into the Economy Minister’s use of persons of trust for constituency work was requested by Momentum chairman Arnold Cassola and then-Repubblika president Robert Aquilina, who filed two separate requests for investigation back in March 2023.

Those reports followed a statement Schembri gave in parliament and which was reported by The Shift News in an article titled ‘Schembri admits using ministerial staff for his personal constituency offices’.

The complaints focused on whether staff within the minister’s secretariat, who are employed by the state and paid for by the public, were being improperly used for partisan constituency work, in breach of public service obligations, the ministerial code of ethics and the requirement for ministers to keep that role distinct from their roles as MPs.

When asked by PN MP Rebekah Borg if it was true that he had ministry staff doing constituency work, Schembri had said that part of his secretariat’s duty was to “remain close to the people” and that he had no intention of changing that.

The minister gave a more nuanced reply when asked similar questions by the standards commissioner, saying such assignments were rare, voluntary, and done after official work hours.

Three of the minister’s secretariat members, Edward Portelli, Jolene Flask, and Sonia Mifsud, testified as part of the probe. They spoke similarly to the minister. While the commissioner noted some inconsistencies between what they said and what the minister claimed, he concluded that they all said they did constituency work on a voluntary basis and after office hours.

The commissioner was less convinced by a statement given to him by cabinet secretary Ryan Spagnol, who argued in a letter that ministerial staff could be deployed to help ministers in constituency matters as their job description included the line “coordination of diary and correspondence including constituency matters”.

That line, the commissioner said, clearly limited such staff members to keeping track of calendar events and did not allow them to get involved in constituency work. Expressly tasking secretariat staff with working in constituency offices would be a breach ethical lines, the commissioner said.

However, the commissioner said he could not find the minister guilty of an ethical breach because there was insufficient evidence that Schembri had regularly tasked secretariat staff with doing such work. He therefore closed the case without censure.