There are a total of 366 parliamentary questions that have gone unanswered since the beginning of this legislature, whilst another 636 questions were defaulted to another sitting.
A total of 7,462 parliamentary questions have been posed thus far this legislature. This information came to light after it was tabled in Parliament by Speaker Anglu Farrugia in response to a parliamentary question by PD Leader Godfrey Farrugia.
The information shows that Transport Minister Ian Borg had been subject to the most questions during the legislature; some 1,192 in total, but that despite this, he had the least percentage of questions left totally unanswered. In fact Borg has not answered 10 of these questions, equating to a rate of 0.8%, whilst a further 62 questions had been defaulted to subsequent sittings.
At the other end of the spectrum, the highest rates of completely unanswered questions can be found in statistics for the ministries ran by Owen Bonnici and Chris Cardona respectively. Bonnici has Justice, Culture and Local Governments under his wing, whilst Cardona's remit is the economy, investment and small businesses. Both Ministers, according to the statistics tabled, have failed to answer 9.2% of the questions asked to them.
In the Bonnici's case, that means that 68 questions out of 741 were not answered, whilst in Cardona's case it means that 19 out of 205 were not answered. A further 95 (12.8%) and 36 (17.5%) respectively were pushed to another sitting.
Given the statistics presented by the Speaker, this newsroom asked Speaker Farrugia whether he felt that there should be more transparency from respondents, both in whether they answer the questions at hand, and in the quality of their response. This newsroom also queried as to whether the Speaker of the House had any authority over the questions, asking whether he has the power to see that such parliamentary questions are answered, and that they are answered to a certain standard.
In response, Speaker Farrugia said that the Chair has on a number of occasions declared that it has no authority whatsoever to interfere in how a Minister replies to a Parliamentary Question; however noted that Speakers have encouraged Ministers to be timely in their responses and to fully answer questions.
In support of this, two extracts from rulings delivered both by Speaker Farrugia and one of his predecessors Louis Galea in 2016 and 2009 respectively.
Speaker Farrugia's ruling in fact pointed out that the House's Permanent Orders make no reference to how an answer to a Parliamentary Question should be formulated in terms of content. References are made in the said Orders however to the nature of questions, to the time of action of the question, and the number of questions permissible amongst others.
Similarly, former Speaker Galea had said that the Chair could not comment or censure answers to parliamentary questions, even in the cases when these answers were evidently not satisfying the principle elements of the question.