Explaining about the delay of guiding documents for a series of laws, Justice Minister Ha Hung Cuong admitted to the National Assembly that the situation has resulted from insufficient quality of legal staff of ministries.  He made the admission at during the online question-answer session of the 13th National Assembly Standing Committee’s 20th meeting in Hanoi on Tuesday. Despite progress in dealing with the owing of guiding documents for laws and ordinances, the number of such documents that failed to be issued remains high, at 107 documents in 2013, affecting socio-economic development and concerning voters, the minister said. Besides considering the responsibility of the Justice Minister in the delay of the document issuance, NA deputies also focused on the responsibility of the ministry in appraising legal documents issued by ministries.

Minister Cuong told the meeting that the Government is drafting a special resolution on law-building to specify the responsibility of the minister in the work. Accordingly, he will have to make reports monthly, quarterly and yearly on the working results. The minister agreed on the deputies’ suggestion that the government should submit half-yearly and yearly reports on the process of issuing instruction documents to the National Assembly. On commenting on the delay, Minister-Chairman of the Government Office Vu Duc Dam blamed it on leaders of ministries, as well as the competence of their lawmaking staffs. He added that the Government has outlined measures to respond to the situation. In order to prevent the issuance of legal documents that are in contrary to the law, Minister Cuong said the ministry is drafting stricter regulations on controlling legal instruments, especially for inter-ministry and inter-sector circulars. He told the session that the ministry has set up an additional department in charge of supervising general legal issues and detecting loopholes and weaknesses in law. Regarding the issuance of a number of impractical regulations and circulars that lack supervision, inspection and adjustment that anger the public, Minister Cuong said the ministry is taking steps to improve the situation.