The hospitals’ deal rescinded by the court must be reviewed in depth from every possible angle, “professionally and swiftly”, Labour MEP and former Prime Minister Alfred Sant told The Malta Independent on Sunday.

“We need to know why and how. The episode needs to be reviewed in depth from a political, legal, administrative, health policy, financial and economic perspective as a whole,” Sant said.

This is also what should have also been done in the past with projects such as Smart City and the San Raffaele hospital, known nowadays as Mater Dei hospital, he added.

Last month, in a landmark judgment, Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale ruled that three hospitals – St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo General – should be returned to the public. Steward Health Care, that had taken over the running of the hospitals from Vitals Global Healthcare, has appealed the judgment, but has since terminated the concession.

Speaking to The Malta Independent on Sunday in Strasbourg, where MEPs discussed and voted on a number of major legislative files in plenary sessions last week, Sant was asked about a number of EU and Maltese issues.

Sant was asked if he suspects wrongdoing by government officials who were involved in the hospitals’ deal. He said that looking at it from an outside perspective, he does not exclude anything, and investigations need to be carried out to see what exactly went on.

Asked who should be investigated, and why, Sant did not mention any names, saying that the case concerns an effort to privatise a big chunk of health services, which has “obviously gone off the rails”.

In the past days Sant has expressed concern on the hospitals’ deal also on the social media, describing it as a “mess”.

Without transparency and a sense of accountability, which should come from following procedures of public management with loyalty, decisions presented as “brave” will end up becoming “monumental disasters”, he wrote on his Facebook page.

Sant said that there are still surprises and disappointments to be revealed from the hospitals’ deal, highlighting two fundamental problems in the public leadership of the country.

Firstly, Sant pointed out that a lot of the meaning of public administration has been lost.

“Government affairs should not be run as if they are private arrangements between two or three ‘inside’ individuals, because they ‘know how to decide’, so that afterwards, what was arranged privately is given a public appearance,” he noted.

Sant added that government affairs cannot be conducted as if they were negotiations between private companies either.

“The established procedures of public management are bureaucratic, long and can always be improved. But following them assiduously is a condition to ensure transparency and a sense of accountability,” he said.

Sant added that without the latter two, the chances for decisions presented as “brave” to become monumental disasters increases drastically.

Secondly, Sant said that we have grown accustomed to the idea that if you bring the private sector into public management, therefore privatising it, you would be buying a cheap ticket for efficiency.

“The facts show otherwise, and not only in the field of hospitals,” Sant said.

In his interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday, Sant was asked about the controversial wording of the abortion bill, and if government should further change the amendments proposed following backlash from the Maltese public.

He suggested that the word “health” in the amendment being proposed by the government is used only once, not twice.

The government’s proposal to amend the Criminal Code, Chapter 9 of the Laws of Malta, is as follows:

243B. “No offence under article 241(2) or article 243 shall be committed when the termination of a pregnancy results from a medical intervention aimed at protecting the health of a pregnant woman suffering from a medical complication which may put her life at risk or her health in grave jeopardy.”

Sant said, however, that while there is leeway for compromise, he doubts that the public wants to achieve it.

Asked which of the two references to “health” should be eliminated, and why, Sant said that the pro-life camp claims that the government’s amendment to the law puts an over-emphasis on the health aspect as contrasted to the life of the mother in order to allow for abortion.

“This, they claim, amounts to an open gate for abortion,” he said.

He said that government is arguing that it is important to also take into account not just the life, but also the health of the mother.

Sant said that the government's amendment is short and generic, “which makes sense, because it cannot be too prescriptive in an already existing legal framework that is already generic and finally will be defining how doctors who have a full professional autonomy, should do their work”.

“However, the government's amendment in a short paragraph has two references to the mother's health and only one to the mother's life. So, in my view, the pro-life camp are correct to claim that the text over emphasises the threat to health as compared to the threat to life,” Sant said.

Sant suggested that one of the references to health could be excised from the text, leaving health and life each with only one reference. “Which one of these two should be edited out, could be a subject of discussion,” he said.

In Strasbourg, MEPs also discussed Minimum Income Schemes, in attempt to address the increasing risk of poverty in many countries.

Asked what the EU is doing to address a growing number of people at risk of poverty, Sant said that the EU and the EU Parliament are working fast to provide the necessary EU cover for national governments, who must carry out the actual work and funding in a number of recovery programmes, dealing with the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and the current inflation crisis.

Many say that the Labour Party is no longer how it used to be, with supporters abandoning the party, losing faith in its politics. Is the Labour party straying away from its socialist principles?

Sant said that the opposite can be argued for the Opposition party.

“In all countries, parties have problems securing allegiances of the members. It is a question of whether they should do it in terms of public relations and the party’s ideology or in terms of the feel good approach,” he said.

“Probably, what the Labour Party has to do is achieve the right balance between the feel good approach and the ideological approach,” Sant said.

The government has long boasted that Malta’s economy is constantly improving. Sant was asked if the economy is going in the right direction, to which he replied affirmatively, as it is one of the best performing economies in the EU.

“Of course, all economies have problems, whether they grow or not. The problem for Malta is that we have to make sure that the motors which are generating growth have a long life, and are sustainable,” Sant said.

He added that Malta is still working on its motors, which could face increasing scrutiny.

“One could argue that we should have been pushing more towards industry, but that route was blocked off by Nationalist administrations. In a way, we are stuck with that, so now we have to reinvent what we do while making sure there is real improvement in living standards,” Sant said.

Asked if he will be seeking re-election for the MEP role, Sant said that this will be his last legislature.