Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri defended his appointment of former Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar as a consultant following his resignation from the Police, saying that he acted on the basis of publicly available information then.

He said that when different information emerged, he acted immediately.

Camilleri was facing a host of supplementary questions from PN MPs Jason Azzopardi and Karol Aquilina and PN leader Adrian Delia over Cutajar, who as of yesterday is formally under investigation after it emerged that he had spoken to an associate of the middleman in the Daphne Caruana Galizia case about details of the investigation.

Cutajar was suspended from his consultancy when his name was first mentioned, and had his contract ended on Monday after Magistrate Rachel Montebello issued the order for investigation.

Camilleri said that he was not given a briefing about the Caruana Galizia case when he took office as Home Affairs Minister and said that he did not know about what emerged in court this week last January.

He said that when the information emerged, he had taken all the necessary decisions in "a few minutes" and said that the police should look at nobody and carry out investigations into anyone they deem necessary.

Camilleri did not answer questions as to why he chose to appoint Cutajar as a consultant after his resignation from Police Commissioner.