These guidelines, intended to prevent ministers from using public funds to boost their own personal profiles, state that government ads shouldn’t include the minister’s names or photographs and shouldn’t include any partisan content.

However, Hyzler found that many ministers had in fact included their photographs in their ads, while three – Ian Borg, Edward Zammit Lewis and Chris Agius – had featured partisan material.

Moreover, he warned that the ads breach the guideline requiring ministries to use “objective and reasonable criteria” when selecting the platforms on which they distribute ads.

“The KullĦadd supplement had a clear political and partisan goal; its aim was praise a political leader [Robert Abela] and celebrate the two-year anniversary of his leadership,” Hyzler said.

“A supplement with such a manifestly political and partisan aim shouldn’t have been supported and sustained by official adverts paid by public funds.”

“If one looks at the supplement in full, one gets the impression that it was carried out with the government’s official support. This represents the breaking down of the line between government and party, which isn’t justifiable.”

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the publication of official adverts in this supplement was a mechanism to subsidise a party organ through public funds.”

Parliament’s committee for standards in public life will now discuss the report and decide whether to issue a remedy. 

Hyzler suggested that the ministers refund the state from their personal funds, arguing that this is common practice in the UK for MPs found to have misused public funds. 

Should these ministers be made to refund this money to the state?