Prime Minister Robert Abela and several environmental activists debated the government’s proposed planning reforms face to face outside Parliament on Monday, as Abela promised that there will be a consultation held on the controversial Bills.

Bills 143 and 144 were published on the Parliament website on Friday afternoon as Parliamentary work continues, unusually, into the depths of summer.

Amongst the many changes, the proposed laws aim to suspend development permits once a formal appeal has been lodged. But various aspects of the bills have been heavily criticised, such as a reform that the Courts would no longer be allowed to outright revoke a permit during an appeal, and that the Planning Authority was being given discretion to deviate and amend planning policies as it wished.

The proposals have since been widely panned and described as a “developer’s wish list” by environmental NGOs and others, and representatives of several such NGOs were outside Parliament on Monday to address a press conference about the matter.

It was then that Prime Minister Robert Abela arrived at Parliament, where a plenary sitting was ongoing, and first fielded questions from journalists – where his answers were heckled by activists present – before then briefly speaking to the activists themselves.

In this debate, Moviment Graffitti’s Andre Callus told the Prime Minister that the government had grabbed what organisations had done to not “let the Planning Authority do what it wants” and challenge approved planning permits “and you made a whole checklist and removed them from the law.”

“I was going to be physically sick when I saw that law,” Callus told the Prime Minister.

In response, Abela said that he was happy to discuss the proposed laws and amend them where necessary – to which Callus and other activists said that they had been seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister for two years and that the Bills should be withdrawn outright.

Abela made reference to the changes within the Bill that will ensure that developments cannot begin when there is an appeal filed – a point which activists have long advocated for – but Callus replied that the principle aim of the Bills does not come across as being to reform the appeals process: “You are dismantling the whole planning system, not just appeals,” he said.

The Prime Minister replied that Callus had not understood the proposed reforms correctly, and walked off.

A few minutes prior, Abela told journalists that it was a “misinterpretation” to suggest that the Court of Appeal cannot rescind planning permits and that the Planning Authority can amend planning policies at will.

He referred to a briefing held earlier in the day, where Planning Authority CEO Johann Buttigieg and Gozo & Planning Minister Clint Camilleri addressed the media.

“One of the fundamental points that must be clarified is that somehow the authority of the Court of Appeal was reduced, as this is a misinterpretation of the law,” Abela said.

“Yesterday I said that this law will bring certainty, clarity, and this is important in any Bill,” he said.