Parliament has adjourned for the Christmas recess and will start holding sessions again in the new year.

It is Malta’s top democratic institution, the place where bills are turned into law. As such, its efficiency is of the utmost importance to ensure that the most work can be done.

There are certain issues which, in this newsroom’s opinion, should be tackled in order to improve the institution. Firstly, and this newsroom has pointed this out on a number of occasions, the length of time each MP has to speak on a Bill is too long, resulting in a number of instances where one MP would repeat what a previous MP said. The European Parliament system, where each speaker is allocated a few minutes to speak, aside from the main speaker from each political group having a longer period, could improve efficiency. Such a change would hopefully result in time to discuss more bills and issues that crop up in the country.

Another issue that was brought up this week was that 750 Parliamentary Questions (PQs) remained unanswered since the last general election.

Minister Clifton Grima’s ministry had the most, by far – 173 were unanswered. He was asked by journalists about this, he said that it doesn’t mean that his ministry had answered the least number of PQs, adding that within the same period, his ministry answered more than 1,100 questions made by MPs from both sides of the House. He said his ministry has an internal structure with public officials who gather the information for him, and he will then prepare the answer to a PQ. He said that he tables the response when he feels comfortable that the facts he was given would be enough to give a clear picture in the response.

There are a number of points that need to be made about the number of unanswered PQs in general. Firstly, one understands that certain questions posed by MPs to government ministers in Parliament could require quite a bit of work to compile data, but surely technology has advanced enough to ensure that data can be collated more quickly than it was 7 or 8 years ago. One also understands that there are a large number of Parliamentary Questions which are filed by MPs, but at the same time, 750 unanswered PQs is an unacceptable amount. Thirdly, while many PQs asked are important, there are times where one wonders why a certain PQ was asked in the first place and here MPs should take more time to consider whether asking that PQ is the right way forward or not.

But at the end of the day, Members of Parliament are the people’s representatives, and ministers must do all they can to ensure that questions posed to them in the country’s highest democratic institution are responded to in a timely manner.

Another point this newsroom wants to make, and this is not so much about efficiency but more about transparency, is that Parliament should introduce the concept of Prime Minister’s Question Time. In the UK, such a session is held once a week, and MPs have the opportunity to have a session dedicated to the Prime Minister answering MP’s questions. This concept should be introduced, as to whether it needs to be weekly, every two weeks or monthly is something that can be discussed.