The Speaker of the House has decided not to take action against Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne, over an opinion article published by The Malta Independent.
PN MP Simon Busuttil had requested the ruling, saying that Fearne had misrepresented what he said in Parliament, similarly to how One News had done.
The Speaker noted the salient part of Fearne's opinion article in The Malta Independent, where he wrote: "With deep regret I note that some of the words and depictions I heard in parliament were extremely painful to the thousands of Maltese men and women who are facing problems of infertility. When someone like Simon Busuttil breezily declares that since neither God nor nature have granted a right to have children then so be it, he seems to be perfectly oblivious to his flesh and blood compatriots who were not as lucky as he was. He is also manifesting a deep disregard of contemporary science. Most spectacularly, he is callously ignoring the fact that our amendments will be increasing the likelihood of embryos reaching maturity than is the case with the current system."
Busuttil in an opinion article of his own, also published by this newsroom, said that Chris Fearne "fails to respect the basic principle of loyalty to the truth on what I said in Parliament. It's a pretty basic principle. It's not asking for much. Yet, he claims that in Parliament I said that 'since neither God nor nature have granted a right to have children, then so be it'. In other words, couples with infertility problems should just lump it. This is a ridiculously false misrepresentation of what I said in Parliament and Chris Fearne knows it very well because he was actually present when I spoke on the changes to the Embryo Protection Act. Instead, he relies on a deliberate distortion of what I said by the Labour Party and its media outfit."
The Speaker said that it was clear that the Deputy Prime Minister was referring to what Busuttil had effectively said, that "...we cannot we cannot do things which are larger than us, such as giving the right to have a child when neither nature nor God gives it to you". He said that while Fearne was referring to this, he did so in terms of making reference to the IVF law amendments, "so much so that he made reference to scientific developments and how this development is being reflected in the proposals."
The Speaker found that, since Fearne was not quoting from Busuttil's discourse, it considers that what Fearne wrote was political comment, and did not feel that it should take a further position in this regard.