Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia has ruled that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) must wait for a decision by the Constitutional Court before proceeding with its questioning of former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri.

In his ruling, the Speaker of the House said that his decision was taken so as not to violate Schembri's fundamental rights to a fair hearing.

Keith Schembri's lawyers had filed Constitutional proceedings, claiming PN MPs had breached his right to a fair hearing during a session of the Public Accounts Committee. Schembri, once Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, had been testifying before the Public Accounts Committee over the Electrogas power station contract, but his testimony had been cut short when his lawyers had threatened to file a Constitutional case in the wake of the demand for an investigation into perjury allegations filed by the committee's PN members following.

PN PAC committee members, MPs Darren Carabott, David Agius and Graham Bencini, had prior to the sitting, formally requested a police investigation into what they said was alleged false testimony by Schembri, as well as former finance minister Edward Scicluna and former deputy Police Commissioner Silvio Valletta.

When Schembri turned up for the sitting after that, Schembri's lawyer Edward Gatt made request for a ruling from the Speaker of the House on the matter. But it is only members of the committee who can demand a ruling from a Speaker. Following this, Schembri's laywers asked whether any one of the seven members was prepared to take on Schembri's request, but none of them did.

Schembri's lawyer Edward Gatt said that a constitutional case will be filed (which has since been filed) and that Schembri will not be answering any questions until that case is decided. Then, during a parliamentary sitting later, Carabott asked the PN MP David Agius, serving as Deputy Speaker of the House in Anglu Farrugia's absence, for guidance on how to move forward considering Schembri chose not to respond, even though the guidelines make it clear that a witness can only choose not to respond to prevent incriminating themselves.

That ruling was given today by Speaker Anglu Farrugia.

In the Constitutional application which was filed by lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo, Schembri is arguing that his right to a fair hearing had been breached when Carabott, who had been presiding the PAC meeting, had not allowed Schembri to request a ruling from the Speaker that would suspend his testimony until the conclusion of the criminal investigation that Carabott, Agius and Bencini had requested. Neither had the three PN MPs recused themselves from the decision on Schembri's request, "in view of their manifest conflict of interest," said the lawyers, adding that this breached the principle of not judging a case in the outcome of which they had an interest. "Not only did they not recuse themselves...but they blocked, in every possible way, every opportunity for a remedy requested by the applicant."

The application requests the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction to declare that Carabott, Agius and Bencini had breached his right to a fair hearing, as well as to declare that Parliament's Standing Orders did not preclude a witness before a parliamentary committee from seeking the protection of the Speaker. It also requests the defendants: Darren Carabott, David Agius, Graham Bencini, as well as the State Advocate and Speaker of the House, to take the necessary measures to suspend Schembri's testimony until the requested criminal investigation into perjury had concluded.