The dissolution of Parliament brings with it the complete halt to all proceedings that are still ongoing in the House of Representatives.

This includes laws that have been tabled but are not yet passed. Anything that is in progress will have to be re-tabled when the new Parliament is convened – if the new government wants to. History has told us that there were occasions when bills put forward in one legislature without being enacted were not submitted when the new term started, particularly if there had been a change of government.

In other instances, bills presented without being passed in one legislature were then amended before being filed again under a new administration, irrespective of whether the same political party won the election.

This is all part of our democratic system. It is understandable that once a term has ended, and the composition of Parliament is changed following an election, any bills that were not enacted must be presented again if the new government intends to make them law.

An election leads to several changes in the line-ups of both the government and opposition teams. Electoral manifestos, on the strength of which parties are elected, might also include amendments to previously tabled but not enacted laws, and so the laws are re-presented with the changes.

What is less understandable is what happens to other processes which are not related to legislation, but which however form part of the parliamentary structure. We are referring mostly to two committees that take centre stage often during the course of a legislature, largely because of controversial issues they debate – the Public Accounts Committee and the Standards Committee.

Just to give one example, the PAC is currently discussing the Electrogas power station deal, and the Opposition has often accused former Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi of delaying tactics. Mizzi has taken four sessions straddling between end 2021 and early 2022 to make his presentation on the project, and once it was time for him to start answering questions, he took offence at what he described as a bad attitude from the Opposition’s representatives, and asked for a ruling from the Speaker. This further delayed the process. During the course of the proceedings, the PN’s members have often remarked that Mizzi was hoping to get off the hook with the calling of an election, leading many listeners to think that once Parliament is dissolved, the process will be stopped.

While it is possible for the proceedings to continue where they left off in the new legislature, it is also possible that the new committee will decide to start the whole process from scratch, or else not do it at all. The latter two options would mean that so much time would have been wasted without any conclusion being reached.

With this in mind, Parliament would do well to come up with a different solution, in the sense that proceedings should always continue where they left off. After all, in this technological age, recordings exist, not to mention the availability of transcripts.

In this way, proceedings would be able to continue from one legislature to another while accusations of procrastination would no longer be made.