I patiently await the creation of a Permanent Committee on Justice and Home Affairs in the House of Representatives. The House cries for one. I have been travelling all over Europe for years, participating in seminars and conferences of the Justice and Home Affairs Committees of the national parliaments of member states pretending to belong to one in my country which does not exist.

With crime and drug consumption a serious concern, with irregular immigration a national problem falling on deaf European ears, and with some legislation on security perilously playing with the traditional limits of civic rights it is high time the government starts to contemplate the creation of a Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

I first wrote about the subject a year ago today in this column. A couple of days later I also spoke in Parliament at adjournment time but my frantic appeals had no fatal attraction with the powers that be. This notwithstanding, I feel I have a moral and political duty to persevere and ultimately I will prevail – whether it will happen under this administration or later, I trust, under Labour leadership is irrelevant. The fact is that Parliament is in need of a permanent committee on internal issues and it will have one sooner or later.

Parliament surely remembers that Alfred Sant had called for the setting up of a permanent committee on security issues in 2001. Subsequently a sitting was held under the auspices of the Committee on Social Affairs but everything stopped there. The irregular immigration debate and the drugs debate on sharing of drugs were successful experiences at the Social Affairs Committee, particularly the latter, and it has helped to defuse political tensions on the subject and strike convergence as we have already seen. But they were issues that should have been debated at home – in a Permanent Home Affairs Committee.

I have just been to Berlin where I attended the conference of Home Affairs Committee chairpersons of the national parliaments of the EU member states and the European Parliament. There we discussed various issues of great international and domestic relevance such as the fight against terrorism, police cooperation, Europol’s role in strengthening the internal security of European states, the harmonisation of the EU member states’ criminal law provisions on combating racism and xenophobia and the future of European Home Affairs policy.

These conferences are normally attended by a mix of parliamentarians from both sides of the House, but this time round I was alone representing Malta. The government, who is expected to lead such delegations, did not even bother to send an MP from within its ranks so it was left to my remit to remind the European community of nations that we exist and have a contribution to make.

My eyes scrolled down the list of participants at the conference. They all belong to committees for internal affairs in their own countries – Nikolay Svinarov, chairman of the Internal Security and Public Order Committee of Bulgaria; Sebastian Edathy, chairman of the Committee on Internal Affairs of the German Buntestag; Evelyn Sepp, chairwoman of the Constitutional Committee of Estonia; Theofilos Vassiliou, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of Public Administration, Public Order and Justice of Greece; Vincenzo Bianco, former Italian home affairs minister (Sicilian), now chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of Italy and a good friend of Malta, with whom I spent most of my time at the conference; Dr Willem Witteveen, chairman of the Internal Affairs Committee of the Netherlands, Hellevi Engstrom, member of the Committee on Justice of Sweden, and so on and so forth.

I was attending under the title of a Member of Parliament of Malta – once a committee on internal affairs does not exist in the Maltese Parliament, which is an inexcusable shame. Indeed Malta is the only European state with no parliamentary committee on Interior and Justice Affairs. The lacuna is not a question of form but a matter of great substance. All the members of the parliamentary committees that were represented at the meeting are specialised in the discussion of major European Conventions concerning security issues and the fight against crime and terrorism. They come to these European conferences with great knowledge of European legislation because they have extensively debated them inside their own domestic parliamentary committees beforehand. This is a great advantage.

Conscious of my own reputation and prestige I take pains to keep abreast with European and other international legislation in connection with security issues and make sure my country is properly represented. I take an active part in the discussions and never miss an opportunity to make spontaneous contributions that sometimes leave their mark and are noted by the rapporteurs or the leading speakers.

But that is because I have always been a diligent and studious person and have been shadow minister on the subject for quite a while now. On occasions the Maltese parliament sends MPs to these European conferences who are, with all due respect, totally unaware of the material to be discussed because they are not familiar with justice and home affairs themes. I can’t blame them if they just have to sit and watch.

The setting up of a permanent committee will lead towards specialisation, better utilisation of human resources and better quality of legislation.

In Malta I took part in some sessions of the new parliamentary committee dealing with the funneling of EU legislation and regulations, particularly those touching Justice and Home Affairs.

I felt like I was rubber-stamping a fait accompli. Except for maybe the minister concerned, or rather his experts, nobody seemed to know what exactly was going on. The system must change. You simply cannot deal with tonnes of laws and regulations with outdated practices. By the time they are splashed on the table of the Maltese parliament most of them have already been overhauled in Brussels.

Thanks to Alfred Sant’s vision, which he most eloquently transmitted in 2001, I know for sure that under a Labour leadership the Maltese Parliament will finally have a committee for internal affairs.

Dr Gulia is the opposition’s main spokesman

on home affairs