MPs unlike ministers not duty-bound to tell the truth, Standards Commissioner says in report

Members of Parliament are not legally bound to tell the truth, the Standards Commissioner Joe Azzopardi stated in a report.

The comment came in a decision to halt an investigation into claims that Opposition MP Claudette Buttigieg spread false information about a major waste treatment project.

In a decision published this week, the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life concluded that while MP Claudette Buttigieg gave a “false impression” of what an environmental study said about a proposed thermal treatment facility at Magħtab, her actions did not breach the code of ethics governing MPs.

The case stemmed from a complaint filed by WasteServ CEO Richard Bilocca, who accused Buttigieg of making misleading statements during a public protest and in Parliament about the impact of the planned facility on air quality and nearby localities.

The commissioner immediately ruled out examining statements made in Parliament, noting MPs’ conduct inside the House falls under the Speaker’s authority, not his office. That left only remarks Buttigieg made at a protest on May 10, 2025, as potentially investigable.

Those remarks, the commissioner found, misrepresented the conclusions of an environmental assessment by suggesting that all localities within a six-kilometre radius, including Valletta, would be negatively affected by the project. In reality, the study found that emissions would remain within regulatory limits and that impacts on air quality would be minimal.

“Intentionally or not,” the decision states, Buttigieg “gave a false picture” of what the study actually concluded.

However, Azzopardi stressed this alone was not enough to amount to an ethical breach. Unlike ministers, MPs are not explicitly bound by an obligation of honesty under their code of ethics. That obligation appears only in the code applicable to ministers and parliamentary secretaries.

“For reasons that are difficult to explain,” the decision notes, the duty of honesty “was not included in the code of ethics for members of Parliament,” effectively meaning that an MP who is not a minister “does not have a duty to tell the truth” under the current rules.

The complainant had relied on a general provision requiring MPs to act in a way that upholds the dignity of the House. But the commissioner said this article sets a high threshold and cannot be used to fill gaps left elsewhere in the code. Treating any untrue statement as a breach, he argued, would amount to rewriting the law.

As a result, the investigation was discontinued.

The decision closes by recalling that as far back as 2020, the first standards commissioner had recommended new codes of ethics for MPs and ministers to address such shortcomings — including the introduction of an explicit duty of honesty for MPs. That recommendation has yet to be implemented.