The Commissioner for Public Standards, Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Azzopardi, has now ruled several times that lying in Parliament is permissible.  He has done so on the flimsy excuse that the Code of Ethics of Members of Parliament, but not that of Ministers, does not specify that this is conduct unbecoming.  He's morally and factually wrong. 

Lying is an ability that humans possess, though most people dislike being lied to. Others may engage in lying behaviour if they believe it is necessary and worthy to do so. Saying something not true makes them feel good. Interestingly, although virtually all societies have sanctions or penalties against lying behaviour, an element of deception and the ability to lie are still essential for some polite interaction and self-preservation.

Lying is seen by psychologists as a consciousness-driven behaviour, being related to individual intention and involving preparation for it. Money and power are more likely to increase unethical behaviour. Lying can be counteracted by conscious inhibitors such as corporate ethics, work ethos, honour codes and emotions. A group of scholars also indicate that moral reminders (e.g., religious statements, honour codes) reduce participants' tendency to lie, by which moral reminders act as a moderator in decreasing the frequency of dishonest behaviour.

Generally speaking, people all over the world feel that politicians are liars. Trust in politicians is generally low and declining globally, with surveys showing low confidence in national governments, parliaments, and parties, is hitting historic lows, though trust in specific institutions (like police/civil service) can vary. Key drivers for this decline include perceived inconsistency, lack of transparency, and perceived unreliability, leading to a "crisis of confidence" in elected representatives, particularly in democratic nations.

Results from 3,377 surveys covering 143 countries between 1958 and 2019   ̶   representing over five million survey respondents   ̶   show how we have arrived at a historically low level of trust in politicians.  This is thought to be related to the belief that politicians do not follow ethical standards at the same or higher levels than ordinary citizens, are not penalised for not acting with integrity, or do not tell the truth.

Can we just shrug our shoulders, like Commissioner Azzopardi is doing?  Not at all. As Dr Viktor Valgarðsson, lead author of a study from the University of Southampton says: "The decline of public trust in political authorities is central to the challenges facing democratic governments in many countries today."  Indeed, low political trust tends to be associated with support for populist parties. It also makes it harder for governments to respond to major crises.

We watch with fascination as candidates for parliamentary or political posts trade falsehoods and allegations of dishonesty. We often joke about office-seekers who seem truth averse ("How do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving."). Ok, we all stretch the truth and tell lies. But there's no doubt that politicians distort the truth more often, use more self-justifications and deceive in larger ways, and with more consequences.

Some psychologists and political scientists claim that people want their politicians to lie to them. "The reason that people want their politicians to lie to them is that people care about politics," said Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University in the USA, adding that "lying is actually very helpful to get your policies implemented".

When people go beyond white lies, they spend a lot of effort justifying and rationalising what they are doing. They engage in something described as "justified dishonesty". It happens when people's desire to be ethical clashes with the desire to profit or get something. In that case people are willing to lie just a bit "as long as it seems legit," says Saul Shalvi who runs the Behavioural Ethics Lab at the University of Amsterdam.

I understand that. But does that mean that we should now rush to make lying by politicians, part of the Code of Ethics? Certainly not. The Commissioner builds his argument by a strict interpretation of the Code of Ethics, forgetting the first principles behind it.  In fact, the very first article of the Code states that an MP "shall at all times, both inside and outside the House (of Representatives) conduct himself in a manner which reflects the status and dignity of the House".  Does lying on an industrial scale lend status and dignity to Parliament?  Surely not. 

Now, I am sure that Justice Azzopardi has learned some philosophy.  I would like to remind him that the philosopher Immanuel Kant said that lying is always morally wrong. He argued that all persons are born with an "intrinsic worth" that he called human dignity. This dignity derives from the fact that humans are uniquely rational agents, capable of freely making their own decisions, setting their own goals, and guiding their conduct by reason.

Kant reasons that lies are morally wrong for two reasons. First, lying corrupts the most important quality of being human: the ability to make free, rational choices. Each lie told contradicts the part of a human that gives moral worth. Second, lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally.  When a lie leads people to decide other than they would, had they known the truth, it has harmed their human dignity and autonomy. Kant believed that to value ourselves as well as others as ends, instead of means, we have a perfect duty not to lie.

"Thou shalt not lie" is and has always been a core moral principle in both Western culture and moral philosophy. I realise that there might be at least some rare or extreme situations in which reasonable moral agents have to judge whether lying is permissible or, perhaps, even a duty. Church father St Augustine constructed many extreme examples of this. In one of them, he staged a Christian son who has to watch his screaming father being tortured by heathens. These heathens tell the son that they will immediately stop torturing his father, if only he is prepared to publicly renounce Christ.  Augustine asked whether this son is then allowed to lie about being a Christian.

Many people today will find that this example perfectly illustrates that at least in some extreme circumstances lying is justified. Many moral philosophers   ̶   non-Kantians and Kantians alike - agree with this judgement. For example, the American philosopher Tamar Shapiro states that it seems "morally myopic" to refrain from lying in extreme circumstances.  These arguments smack of utilitarian thinking, involving an estimation of whether a lie will bring better good than the truth.

However, it is very difficult for a person to be objective in estimating the good and the harm that his or her lies will produce. We have a vested interest in the lies we tell and an equally vested interest in believing that the world will be better if we lie from one instance to the next. For these reasons, lying is morally wrong because we cannot accurately measure lies' benefits and harms.

In any case, the cases dealt with by the Commissioner did not happen in extreme circumstances. They were run-of-the-mill statements and answers which merited to be truthful. The Director of the Institute for Constitutional and Democratic Research of the UK, Sam Fowles, argues that politicians should be held to the same professional standard as other regulated professions - such as barristers or solicitors - for whom deliberate deception is defined by law. He sees politicians as a natural extension of this.

Again, the Senedd Standards Committee in Wales recently put forward recommendations inspired by the view that self-policing by candidates and politicians is preferable. It ruled out judicial monitoring of serving Senedd members. The Committee's proposals suggested that instead of judicial oversight, a note would be made if a Member of the Senedd has lied, and that the electorate in a given constituency would then be allowed to vote on whether the MP who has lied should be unseated. This recognises voters as the primary decision-makers in the enforcement of standards for their democratic representatives. 

The Maltese public is being serially misinformed and there is no constitutional guardrail to prevent it.  Many of those involved in politics don't seem to see much of a problem. They seem to think that politicians should be allowed to mislead the public if it got them votes. Truthfulness is, in their view, an unfair burden to impose on politicians. Political lying, however, is not merely a political problem. It is also a constitutional problem.

One cannot find any explicit exhortations to tell the truth in our Constitution, but many of our most important constitutional arrangements, operate on the assumption that politicians will speak truthfully as a matter of course. Deliberately misleading Parliament is in the nature of contempt, even though Parliament's Standing Orders do not list it as such.  If discourse in the House is to be meaningful, it must be rooted in fact. Politicians have a particular role in this because much of the information which informs public discourse comes from politicians, and they have a uniquely privileged platform.

When politicians mislead the public, it is serially misinformed. Quite often, the public's beliefs about the facts around major public policy issues (like immigration or the environment) are wildly inaccurate. Things aren't improving.  

Anybody who believes that politicians will behave honourably just because it is the right thing to do is living in a nice fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless. Once politicians seek and exercise positions of substantial power, it is right that they should be held to high ethical standards, including truth-telling.