Parliament’s Standing Committee for Standards in Public Life has authorised the publication of three reports submitted to it by the Standards Commissioner.
Two of these reports concern official government advertisements that, the Commissioner found, served as publicity for individual ministers. One case concerns a video issued by Minister Clifton Grima, while the other case concerns a video issued by the Office of the Prime Minister and featuring the Prime Minister and various ministers and parliamentary secretaries.
These videos were treated as advertisements by the Commissioner because they were published on social media by means of sponsored posts, meaning that the government paid money so the videos would reach a wider audience. In his reports on these cases, the Commissioner reminded the Standards Committee about the need to adopt rules on government advertisements.
The third case concerns comments made by the MP Alex Borg about the Fort Chambray concession in Gozo. The Commissioner for Standards found that the Hon. Borg’s comments on the concession were not in keeping with the facts. In his report, the Commissioner noted that the code of ethics for MPs did not oblige them to tell the truth, but he still found that a breach of ethics had taken place because of the particular circumstances of this case.
In the Commissioner’s opinion, none of these cases were grave in nature. Cases that are not grave can be closed by the Commissioner himself on the basis of an apology. In all three cases, however, the person investigated did not apologise. This was why the Commissioner referred the cases to Parliament’s Standards Committee.
It is up to the Committee to authorise the publication of reports referred to it by the Commissioner.
The reports are accessible from the links below.
