Joseph Muscat has responded to speculation that new legislation to limit freezing orders was being rushed through parliament for his benefit, saying he did not even know what the bill was about. 

"Honestly, I don't even know what this bill is about. I saw it this morning in the newspaper, and I wasn't sure exactly what was happening in this regard," the former prime minister said on Tuesday. 

Muscat was asked by Malta Today to respond to claims that the government was fast-tracking the legislation, after years of inaction, for his benefit. 

Muscat said comments in that vein by the PN on Monday further fuelled his doubt over the impartiality of the magistrate who is handling the inquiry into the hospitals deal. 

"The fact that there are politicians who say that something will happen to Joseph Muscat, or that he will be taken to court, strengthen the serious doubts and suspicions I have, that I have no confidence in the magisterial inquiry, in view of the many leaks," Muscat said. 

The inquiry into the way the management of three public hospitals was handed to Vital Global Healthcare has Muscat as a person of interest. His home was searched last year as part of the ongoing probe.

The former prime minister had constantly denied wrongdoing. He has also instituted proceedings calling for the magistrate handling the inquiry to be replaced.    

On Monday, the Nationalist Party said the government was fast-tracking the legislation "for obvious and known reasons". 

Later, during a parliamentary debate on the freezing order, justice shadow minister Karol Aquilina said the new law was a "Christmas gift" for someone. 

"Why is this law being rushed two weeks before Christmas, when there are so many other laws that have been pending for months? To whom does the government intend to give this Christmas gift?" Aquilina told parliament on Monday.

"I don't need to say to whom. Everyone knows who it is. We could just very well give it a name and a surname," he said. 

The new law will change the current situation where people accused of financial crime have all their assets frozen pending trial. Instead, the amounts frozen will be set by the courts in proportion to the amounts involved in the alleged crime

Justice minister Jonathan Attard replying to questions by Times of Malta on Monday denied that the enactment of the law was in any way connected to Muscat and said it followed complaints by the courts that freezing orders were often disproportionate to the amounts which the accused would have allegedly defrauded.