Evarist Bartolo, the MLP’s tourism spokesman, said the Nationalist Party was promising measures in tourism it should have introduced years ago. It was only trying to win votes.

The PN was promising to cut the restaurants VAT rate from 18 per cent to five per cent when it had not tried to do this in its EU membership negotiations though competing destinations which joined the EU with Malta had done so.

The PN was also saying it would reduce the tax families paid for hosting students learning English here. In fact it was the PN itself which had made a shambles of the sector by the serious difficulties it had created.

It was also promising to expedite procedures for the issue of visas for visitors from Russia, Turkey, China and India though for years it had done nothing in the sector. What the PN was promising, Mr Bartolo said, were not new ideas, but attempts at improvements which should have been brought in years ago.