Speaker of the House: Fewer MPs… more efficient parliament

A parliament with fewer members would prove to be more efficient, according to Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia.

For the first time in its history, the Maltese House of Representatives is made up of 71 members as a result of the decision of the Constitutional Court to grant the Nationalist Party two extra seats in return for a mistake made during the vote counting at the 2013 general election.

Farrugia, who has repeatedly called for changes to parliament’s standing orders in order to reflect “the times of today”, told MaltaToday that it was high time the two political parties represented in parliament – Labour and PN – take reform talks seriously.

He believes that there should be a limit to the number of members elected to parliament; the seats that can be elected from each district should be restricted whilst even Malta’s 13 districts should be reduced.

“For a country with a population of just over 400,000 we surely do have a lot of MPs,” he said, adding that Malta’s proportion of MPs to its residents was definitely high.

Although with larger populations, countries like Luxembourg and Cyprus are often used to draw comparisons with Malta. Farrugia in fact refers to these countries to make his point of how “excessive” the Maltese parliament’s composition is: Luxembourg has a maximum of 60 MPs whilst 50 members sit in the Cypriot chamber.

“A change in this sense requires amendments to the Constitution and the government and the opposition should initiate talks to determine how this could be brought about,” Farrugia said.

But are the Labour and Nationalist parties willing to kickstart the talks? It seems that they are more likely to go around the topic from their point of view.

On its part, the Labour Party told MaltaToday that it was busy considering the “unprecedented” court decision and the repercussions that might arise as a result. The immediate effect, the spokesperson said, was the composition of parliament.

“Because the government has a strong and unequivocal majority, nothing has changed in terms of stability. But one has to see how these changes would affect future governments,” a spokesperson for Labour said.

“One has to analyze the situation meticulously to ensure that the principle of proportionality advocated in our Constitution is truly adhered to. The PL is doing so.”

A spokesperson for the Nationalist opposition said that the PN has been “open to electoral reform” for the past 20 years but this has been “systematically blocked” by the Labour Party.

“It would be pertinent to note that today we have 71 MPs only because two Labour MPs should not have been there,” the PN spokesperson added.

But perhaps what worries the Speaker more is the length and quality of debates in parliament. Parliamentary procedure – the standing orders – gives each individual a maximum of 40 minutes to say what they like during parliamentary discussions on a particular bill. The Labour government has now agreed to go down to 30 minutes although no changes have come into force as yet.

“The speaking time of each MP should be limited to a maximum of 20 minutes... Imagine 71 MPs each with 40 minutes speaking time; parliament’s efficiency in terms of clearance rate of legislation would be affected,” Farrugia said.

The Speaker said that standing orders should also be changed to allow the interruption of a member of parliament “who is saying ridiculous and absurd things”.

For Farrugia, limiting the number of MPs means revisiting the constitution and reducing the number of members that could be elected from each district. He also suggests that the 13 districts should go down, increasing the number of localities with a particular district.

“Taking Malta’s size, it is a parochial system which sees citizens electing representatives from their same locality,” he said.