Opposition Leader Bernard Grech, while speaking in Parliament, announced that a protest will take place in front of Parliament on Wednesday at 6pm, following the latest National Audit Office report on the hospitals deal.

Grech said that the Nationalist Party will bring out supporters and demonstrators outside the House of Representatives, to protest the government's record on the mishandling of the Vitals-Steward hospitals privatisation deal, saying that the public cannot remain silent.

Grech said that it was surreal that government continues to "not just lie, but try to change the truth of a story we have all lived."

"All those in the PL except for Marlene Farrugia and Godfrey Farrugia, since 2013, have always voted in favour of the corrupt agreement Joseph Muscat made, and which is further sustained by Robert Abela," Grech said.

Grech said that Muscat and Abela have done what they can to use taxpayer funds to prevent the court sentence, which annulled the concession, from coming out as it did.

Grech also said that the former Finance Minister Edward Scicluna was also involved in this, as the Finance Minister is meant to ensure that public funds are used well, "and not given to fraudsters".

He said that Health Minister Chris Fearne and Finance Minister Clyde Caruana had passed a memo to Cabinet for authorisation to settle an agreement between government and Steward Health Care, which was endorsed.

"Robert Abela cannot wash his hands from the stains he has brought on himself," Grech said, also reiterating that the report says that the €400 million government gave to Steward Health Care did not include workers' salaries, saying that Abela lied to the public.

Earlier in the sitting, PN MP Karol Aquilina accused Prime Minister Robert Abela's government of paying Steward Health Care more than former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's government did.

Aquilina said that four more scandals emerged from the NAO report, which he said are damning for Abela's government, deeming the PL as the 'largest fraudsters.'

"Vote after vote, budget after budget, and year after year, Robert Abela's government continued paying Steward Health Care," Aquilina said. He accused government of wanting to discuss the matter urgently yesterday, because they do not want anyone to read the full report.

Aquilina said that Abela should not feel as if he was exonerated from the report, but rather he is the one most condemned. He said that government made no decisions to stop paying Steward Health Care after Abela was elected to government in 2020, even after the PN brought it to government's attention that Steward Health Care was being paid for nothing.

One of the scandals Aquilina mentioned was that six days after Health Minister Chris Fearne and Finance Minister Clyde Caruana were appointed into Abela's government on 21 January 2020, Fearne had gone to Cabinet and asked for a waiver for Steward from performance guarantees and meeting financial obligations.

Aquilina said that on that day, Cabinet voted in favour of the waiver for Steward Health Care.

He said that the Auditor General also mentioned in the report that in the first year Abela was in government, government paid Steward Health Care around €49 million.

Aquilina continued that in 2020, the report found that Steward made a €6 million profit off the backs of the public, quoting page 313 of the report.

He also said that on 15 February 2021, Fearne and Caruana went to Cabinet and asked to pay Steward an extra €25 million, which Cabinet approved. "It was so urgent that four days later, government indeed signed and paid this extra €25 million," Aquilina said.

Aquilina also claimed that the report says that the amounts paid to Steward Health Care did not include workers' salaries, as Abela claimed on Monday.

He said that the payments indicated that from 2016 to 2019, under Muscat's tenure, government paid Stewards €126,600,000. Under Abela's tenure, government paid €280,000,000 to Steward, with Aquilina saying that Abela has done double the wrongdoing Muscat did, "knowing that the concession was fraudulent".

He said that Abela and government must shoulder the criminal and political responsibility.