The prime minister should no longer take the people for a ride about the Steward Healthcare agreement and should instead stop funds for the vitiated hospitals managements contract, Opposition leader Bernard Grech said on Wednesday. 

He was reacting to comments by Robert Abela on Tuesday that the government will take "all possible legal action" against Steward Healthcare if the company fails to honour its contractual obligations in the running of three state hospitals. He also claimed not to have had prior knowledge of a €100 million penalty clause to be paid to Steward if the contract collapses, saying the government would do its best not to have to pay it. 

Grech said that instead of blaming everybody else when he had served as the prime minister's consultant when the penalty clause was signed, Abela should go about returning public hospitals to the people.

He should not be trying to issue warnings about penalties if the contract was not honoured, when he knew that contractual obligations were already being broken by the company.

But the prime minister was being stubborn and would be handing Steward €69m next year for a poor service and ghost works. He should be immediately stopping such payments and restoring to the people the funds that were stolen from them. That was what the opposition was already seeking to achieve, he said.