Watching the news bulletin and the discussion programme which preceded it on TVM the night before last, I heard along with many thousands that Queen Mary University (or as the prime minister and the TVM reporter put it, “Queens Mary Hospital) would be investing €200 million to bring Gozo general hospital and St Luke’s hospital up to the level of Mother of God Hospital in Malta.

My immediate reaction was ‘Why on earth would Queen Mary University want to spend €200 million on Maltese hospitals, and how in heaven’s name does it even have that amount of money to splash around on its own campus, let alone in another country? Have its board of governors gone loopy?’ There was bound to be a catch, I thought, or something wrong in the reporting, or the prime minister had set out to mislead the public deliberately again by mixing up various bits of fact to produce an overall untruth.

That evening’s coverage of the news on the online media was not much help, given that it reported what the prime minister had said a few minutes after he said it, before any attempt could be made at getting further clarification or some proper details.

This newspaper, for instance, on Tuesday night reported the prime minister’s words faithfully, which means that he really was seeking to mislead. I quote: “Prime Minister Joseph Muscat this evening announced a €200 million investment by the private sector in the health sector to ensure that the services remain free of charge and all workers retain their job. Speaking in Luqa, Dr Muscat said the investment by Queen Mary University includes the opening of a medical school in Gozo, as well as the building of a new hospital in Gozo together with the refurbishment of St Luke’s Hospital and Karin Grech Hospital. All hospitals will be of the same level, he said, and this will resolve the issue of space.”

What do you understand from this? You understand that Queen Mary University will be spending €200 million on setting up a medical school in Gozo, building a new Gozo hospital, and sorting out St Luke’s and Karin Grech Hospitals. That is what you were meant to understand – that Muscat pulled off the big trick of getting foreigners to spend €200 million on the privilege of sorting out our problems because they are so rich and stupid and he’s so clever.

Then yesterday, things began to grow clearer as Health Minister Konrad Mizzi spoke about the subject, and this time he had no choice but to be a little bit specific because there were reporters in front of him. Yesterday afternoon the government signed an agreement with Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry (which, it wasn’t properly explained, is part of Queen Mary University) to open a campus for a medical and dental school in Gozo. There was no mention of the amount of money to be invested, and it was made a little clearer that Queen Mary University/Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry would have nothing to do with the building of any new hospital in Gozo or the refurbishment of old and defunct hospitals in Malta. There was absolutely no indication of what form or nature this campus would take, except that it would see the first 60 students in September 2016 and take ‘300 students in five years’. Well, 300 divided by five is 60, and the first lot has been given as 60, so it doesn’t take much to conclude that they’re looking at a total maximum take-up of 60 students a year.

The fact that they specified five years tells me that this is a time-delineated project, for five years only, and that it will function as your typical ‘year on an overseas campus’. Given that the students will all be coming in from overseas, the only benefit I can see here is to those who will be renting them accommodation in Gozo and selling them food and services. From a medical training aspect, they will have to use the existing services at Gozo General Hospital, because they are most unlikely to be building a teaching hospital of their own for five short years. In fact, they are not going to do that. It’s a shame that nobody from Queen Mary University was there alongside the Health Minister at his press conference, as would ordinarily be the case in these situations, because then reporters could have got some proper answers that the government seems unwilling to give. But I suppose the newspapers could always ring up Queen Mary University and get the information our government isn’t giving us.

In any case, none of this is any news at all, despite the fanfare and build-up deliberately fostered by the prime minister over recent days to distract from the compound messes and scandals in which he finds his government embroiled. The man he sacked as health minister, Godfrey Farrugia, had signed this agreement on the basis of a memorandum of understanding just over a year ago. What the government signed yesterday was just the final thing.

So what about that investment of €200 million in building a new hospital in Gozo and getting St Luke’s Hospital/Karin Grech Hospital up to scratch? Well, what a surprise – it turns out that it doesn’t exist. That’s right. It doesn’t exist. It turned out at yesterday’s press conference that the government will be asking whether anybody in the private sector is interested in spending that much money on upgrading Gozo General Hospital (not building a new hospital) and St Luke’s/Karin Grech Hospitals and then being paid by the government to run them so that services are provided free of charge to patients. The call for proposals will be issued in a couple of weeks.

So in other words, the government has decided it is going to ask private companies whether they want to spend €200 million doing that, and then immediately issued a press release describing its notion as concrete investment. If we were not already through the rabbithole, I would describe this as unbelievable. Also, even if the government does find somebody willing to spend that much on refurbishing Malta’s state hospitals – something tells me it won’t be private sector at all, but more like China – this does not represent something of benefit to the Maltese public but rather an additional financial burden because the government will be paying the operator so that the operator will provide the services ‘for free’.

But of course, all people will have seen is the key phrase ‘€200 million investment’ – and that’s exactly what the prime minister wanted, and why he sought to deliberately mislead us.