Justice Minister clarifies ways to improve legal document quality

Minister of Justice Le Thanh Long answers questions at the ongoing 22nd session of the National Assembly Standing Committee on March 19

He said since 2016, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has verified 718 documents, including 93 proposals and draft laws, ordinances and resolutions. Despite the big number of documents with many of them having new and complex content, the ministry has made efforts to ensure the verification progress such as the proposals on the draft laws relating to planning and the NA’s draft resolution on piloting special mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City.

He admitted that the scope of some drat documents was not thoroughly considered, leading to the scrutiny of some bills like the draft revised law on denunciation and the draft revised law on anti-corruption expanded from two to three NA sessions.

Meanwhile, some drafts were submitted to deputies, committees and the Council of Ethnic Affairs of the NA behind schedule. Although the verification quality has been gradually improved, the feasibility of some policies and regulations in draft documents hasn’t received due attention.

Long said ministries and sectors need to invest appropriate resources in lawmaking work while clarifying the responsibility of their leaders in ensuring the progress and quality of draft documents.

Since the beginning of the 14th parliament in mid-2016, the Government, the Prime Minister, ministries and sectors have issued 368 documents among the 481 needed-to-be-built documents stipulating details of the promulgated laws.

The minister attributed the slow issuance of those documents to the big number of law contents that the Government, the Prime Minister, ministries and ministry-level agencies have to make detail regulations on. Meanwhile, many issues are new and complicated, leading to the prolonged drafting and promulgation of documents.

To address the problem, he said relevant parties have to seriously adhere to the 2015 law on promulgation of legal documents. The drafting agencies should closely coordinate with the MoJ and NA agencies from the law proposal to the drafting and amendment of draft laws, ordinances and resolutions so as to concretise issues right in the drafts and not need many more documents to detail them.

They should also report their document making progress to the Government and the Prime Minister so as to solve any difficulties arising in a timely manner while publicising the progress on the Government portal, he added.