Maybe it is somewhat unfair that the Prime Minister gets dogged with tricky questions when he goes on a walkabout regarding some private sector venture.

That is, however, what Super One used to do with Lawrence Gonzi and Eddie Fenech Adami, once even following their prey into a crowded lift.

And, of course, it is inevitable that questions will be asked following the years-long spin that the BWSC plant at Delimara ‘produced cancer’. It must remain one of the low points of the election campaign when a whole Marsaxlokk family was trooped out at a party meeting and claimed it had suffered cancer among many family members because of the Delimara power station.

Cancer and sickness are deeply personal events that should have never been politicised. Of course, all this was leading up to the commitment by Joseph Muscat, Labour leader, that a future Labour government will do away with this ‘cancer factory’.

We know now that, 10 months after his election, the Prime Minister has not got round to removing the ‘cancer factory’. On the contrary, when the IPPC permit for the BWSC plant came up for renewal, the government itself called for an extension of the permit.

While that is relatively understandable given that such a heavy commitment cannot be done overnight, we now have a new situation.

An assessment of air quality in Marsaxlokk and Birzebbuga, available on the Mepa website shows that there is no increase in pollution following the commissioning (that is, the beginning of the full operation) of the BWSC power station extension.

Two post-commissioning reports produced in June and December 2013 did not indicate that the power station had contributed to any excess beyond the EU limited values for PM10 or PM2.5 between December and June 2013.

The report also found "no clear temporal relationship" between the Delimara dust emissions and the particulate matter concentrations recorded at either Birzebbuga or Marsaxlokk.

The report, by a British university, attributed the occasional breaches (or exceedencies) in EU particulate level limits to what were called ‘regional’ sources, including sand from the Sahara Desert particularly on those days when the prevalent wind was from the south or southwest

But when Prime Minister Muscat was asked, at a business event on Wednesday, if he would retract his ‘cancer factory’ pre-electoral claim, he refused to back down, claiming instead that the previous government had tampered with the emission thresholds, increasing the maximum permissible emission levels so as to, Dr Muscat went on, award the contract of the Delimara power station extension to BWSC.

As Professor Edward Mallia replied, the ‘cancer factory’ remarks are “arrant nonsense” and Dr Muscat’s stance was “arrogant and irresponsible”.

Besides, Dr Muscat continued to walk into the wall when he added that one should listen to the Marsaxlokk residents when these same residents have very recently made it clear they do not want the floating gas ship to be anchored inside Marsaxlokk Bay.

All this goes to show the ill-advisability of bringing in health issues in partisan discussions, of jumping the gun with partisan comments, of making electoral commitments one cannot then keep, and also of allowing oneself to being made to treat such sensitive subjects on the margin of a press event.

One acknowledges the need to treat the energy issue with maximum urgency and to address it strategically. That is what this government is trying to do with the conversion to gas project but that is also what the previous government was trying to do with the BWSC plant and more with the Interconnector from Sicily. That this government is also tackling what seems very like massive fraud on the supposedly-super-efficient smart meters is also a very important step.