In evidence to the Parliamentary Committee on the Codification of Laws, the dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Malta, Kevin Aquilina, pointed out that the Constitution made no provision for stipulating the individual responsibilities of ministers in government. The Constitution only provided for collective ministerial responsibility answerable to Parliament. As things stand, individual ministerial responsibility is only covered by convention. He, therefore, proposed that constitutional amendments should specifically set out a definition of ministerial responsibilities.

Prof. Aquilina’s comments and the parliamentary committee’s reaction to them raise two issues: the first is about individual ministerial responsibility and the second the wider issue of the state of the Constitution.

Ministerial responsibility has been much in the news recently, first with the transport reform debacle and the vote of no confidence in the minister responsible, and also, more widely, in the saga over the situation with regard to home affairs and justice issues.

These recent episodes must be seen in the context of how government, under the Constitution, operates. Although we talk about “the government” and the convention of the “collective responsibility” of Cabinet ministers that underpins it, this can be somewhat misleading as a description of how the business of governing this country actually works in practice.

The first thing to be noted about the government is that it is made up of a federation of ministries or departments. Yet, it is through individual ministers that the day-to-day business of government is formally conducted. It is the minister who is charged with the formal responsibility for a ministry’s activity. S/he has to account to the Prime Minister and, ultimately, to Parliament, and to the wider public and taxpayer for what their ministry does.

This is what the governing convention (it is not written down anywhere) of “individual ministerial responsibility” is all about. It is about carrying the can when things go wrong. Sometimes it could mean resignation when things go badly wrong but in Malta this part of the convention has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

There has been perennial discussion, in all advanced parliamentary democracies, about what the “responsibility” and “accountability” of ministers actually mean in practice, whether the terms are the same and how such obligations are properly discharged.

While it may be possible to have a ministerial code of conduct – ministers in fact have to abide by the 1994 Code of Ethics – which offers them broad guidelines, drafting something workable to be entrenched in the Constitution may prove to be far more difficult. The discussion leads naturally to consideration of the Constitution, which has been amended on a number of occasions.

There can be little doubt that the Constitution has served this country well but there may now be areas that need revisiting to take account of the vast changes that have occurred in Malta over the years, not least with the country’s accession to the European Union. The EU is now an integral part of the Maltese political system and set to become even more so with the signing of the EU Fiscal Compact, with old notions of parliamentary sovereignty having to be abandoned.

It may, therefore, be timely for a high-powered commission of inquiry to be established to examine all aspects of the Constitution, take stock of how well it has stood the test of time and recommend how it might be improved to reflect the modern state of the Republic.