The Standards Commissioner, in one of his first major orders of business since his appointment, yesterday unleashed a hailstorm of a report scrutinising, in finite detail, the work of Members of Parliament for government outside of the House.

This state of affairs, in which government MPs are handed jobs by their own administration, has been festering for so long now that hardly anyone bats an eyelid with each consecutive appointment of MPs – jobs which the Standards Commissioner has labelled as ‘fundamentally wrong’ as these particular people are not necessarily the best for the job and, worse still, the practice is creating needless jobs, which also incidentally usually command well above-average second wages.

The Standards Commissioner found that every single government backbench MP moonlights in some other job provided by the central government, in addition to their regular day job. That government MPs work for the state is nothing new, but matters have been taken to a whole new level altogether by the Joseph Muscat administration.

The practice, according to the Standards Commissioner, breaches both the underlying principles of the Constitution’s restriction on commercial or other financial relations between an MP and the state, in that it is incorrect for MPs to take, or even be perceived to be able to take, any undue advantage of their position as MPs.

Moreover, he also notes that an MP employed as person of trust or on the basis of contract of service also possibly breaches the Code of Ethics of Public Employees and Board Members, as well as possibly even the Constitution itself.

One question is: should we really be paying for all that?

Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that, as the Standards Commissioner points out, such jobs are dished out to government MPs to appease those who are not appointed as Ministers or Parliamentary Secretaries, or else as a means of quelling calls for raising the salaries of MPs. 

Another question is: should we really be paying for this kind of appeasement?

The very concept is ridiculous and exposes a serious problem with our parliamentary composition.  An MP should be elected to serve the country, and not their pockets. But, on the other hand, how is Parliament meant to attract the best people without offering them proper remuneration?

In fact, the Standards Commissioner notes that the issue of MPs’ remuneration is a matter that needs to be addressed by Parliament with urgency, and even suggests that the issue of parliamentary remuneration could to as far as giving MPs the option to be paid as a full-time or part-time MP.

The country is run by a Parliament that works on a part-time basis even though the running of a country, irrespective of its size, really ought to be a full-time vocation, and MPs should not, under any circumstances, be given government such sweeteners as some sort of monetary compensation for their service to the country.

The only full-time politicians are members of the Cabinet of Ministers. The rest receive their parliamentary honoraria for what is essentially a part-time job when the country deserves so much better than that.

The Standards Commissioner notes that administration after administration has refused to touch this hot potato for fear of political fallout but we beg to differ. The creation of a full-time Parliament will, conversely, restore faith in the workings of the House, result in better legislation, and it will also allow the public to hold MPs more accountable for the work they do.

The issue has been swept under the carpet for years on end by the very people who make the laws and who stand to be directly affected.

But this may just be one area in which the government and opposition finds themselves in agreement on what would be a quantum shift for the country – the creation of a full-time Parliament with full-time Members.

This is the only real, sure fire solution to preventing conflicts of interest between parliamentarians, their state jobs and their day jobs.

The Muscat government was the first to have made a move in the direction of a full-time Parliament when it commissioned a report that recommended a full-time Parliament way back in April 2013, a month after being first elected, which was drawn up by the Ombudsman, the Auditor General and the Electoral Commissioner in December of that same year. 

It had also presented the option, as the Standards Commissioner has, for MPs to choose between being full- or part-time parliamentarians, with matching remuneration levels.

Everyone undoubtedly agrees that while a good salary should not be the motivation behind anyone’s desire to enter politics, those who go down this path usually sacrifice a great deal. Malta cannot afford to have underpaid politicians in view of the fact that many of them actually sacrifice their personal lives to enter politics.

A decent salary, it is widely held, would also help discourage the temptation of corruption.

The government has welcomed yesterday’s report, and has said it will examine it in detail.  Given the fact that it was the Prime Minister himself who set the ball rolling back in April 2013, he should now bring it to fruition.  Now that would truly be a feather in his somewhat tattered cap.