The Knesset plenum Monday night approved in its first reading an amendment to Basic Law: Government, proposing to lift the limit on the number of ministers and deputy ministers the prime minister is allowed to appoint.
 
Sixty-five MKs supported the measure, while 54 voted against it.
 
Should the amendment pass, it would cancel the 2013 law limiting the number of ministers in a government to 18 (not including the prime minister) and the number of deputy ministers to four. The law had already been suspended after the 2015 election, when the government passed a temporary measure allowing three more ministers to be appointed. The proposed amendment would fully cancel the law. The last government had 21 ministers.
 
During the debate, MK Yair Lapid (Blue and White) said “We can now hang a sign in front of the hospital in Afula that says, ‘We won’t be buying an MRI machine because the money had to go to an unnecessary government ministry.'”
 
Lapid accused Likud of trying to establish “eight unnecessary ministries,” saying “there is no need for a ‘Ministry for Intelligence Affairs’ — you just need the jobs, the drivers, the salaries.”
 
Minister Zeev Elkin (Likud), speaking on behalf of the government, said: “There were 23 ministers in a government Yesh Atid and Yair Lapid were a part of. And there are MKs [in the opposition] who served as ministers in a government with 30 ministers.”