At a meeting in Ha Noi last Saturday, committee members decided that the draft bill failed to introduce an effective mechanism to deal with public complaints.

New points in the draft bill did not differ substantially to the current system on addressing public complaints, which has been in use for more than three decades, said the NA Law Committee chairman Nguyen Van Thuan.

The current mechanism wasn't very efficient, he said.

"If this mechanism is kept in place, the major goal of repairing the current inefficient way of dealing with complaints and denunciations in State administrative management can't be reached," he said.

The draft Law on Complaints was taken from the current Law on Complaints and Denunciations, which has been in effect since 1998.

Thuan, together with NA’s Judicial Committee chairwoman Le Thi Thu Ba, Finance and Budget Committee chairman Phung Quoc Hien and Ombudsman Committee chairman Tran The Vuong, agreed that the separation of the Law on Complaints and Denunciations into two separate laws without adequate amendments had failed to meet requirements.

Vuong said dealing with complaints had become increasingly complicated during the past years.

"After two rounds of supervision made by the assembly, we found that a number of complaints had been passed around to avoid responsibility, which has badly affected residents' rights and benefits," he said.

Between 75 and 80 per cent of complaints were reported to involve land issues.

No legal precedent

Earlier on Saturday morning, a majority of participants at the meeting opposed the introduction of legal precedent at court trials as proposed in the draft amended Civil Procedure Code.

"It's most likely that we haven't done enough research on it and in which State context precedent should be applied," said Vuong.

"Laws change all the time here. How can we use a precedent in the following cases?

"So the introduction of legal precedent is not appropriate."

Thuan agreed, saying that the Vietnamese legal system focused on written laws, therefore legal precedents should not be included.

Ba said learning from international experiences on legal precedents required cautiousness as each country had its own legal system.

The definition of legal precedent in the draft was too simple and not accurate, she said.

"It fails to make clear which cases can refer to legal precedent, as well as to define the relations between legal precedent and formal legal documents. Not all decisions on a case by a higher court can be considered as legal precedent that must be followed by lower courts," she said.

Legal precedent is applied in some countries who require courts to follow decisions of superior or previous courts. — VNS