This was decided at a two-day workshop that ended yesterday in the northeastern province of Quang Ninh.

"NA committees often agree or reject drafts without challenging the ideas on which they are based," said a senior expert with the Institute for Legislative Studies, Tran Trong Duong.

He said opposition to the ideas presented by those compiling the drafts was an important way of uncovering unreasonable thinking in policies being discussed.

Duong also said that to improve the quality of draft laws, it was essential to invite scientists and specialists to contribute opposing thoughts.

"The current verification method is merely a closed meeting between members of NA committees," said Duong.

Despite the workshop’s decision, some feel that the operating mechanism of NA committees does not favour the change.

According to Cao Ngoc Xuyen, deputy director of the National Assembly’s Committee for Finance and Budget, it was hard to get committee members together since most of them were not full-time NA deputies and held varying positions throughout the nation.

Another problem was that most of draft laws were sent to committees for study later than regulated. In many cases, they received drafts only a few days before meeting.

Former chairman of the NA Law Committee Vu Duc Khien shared the same concerns.

He said the committee wanted to involve specialists in verifying draft laws, but their late delivery left committee members with too little time to do a proper job.

This also made it impossible to invite specialists for their comments.

All NA committees admitted in their reports reviewing the 11th National Assembly sessions that they had regularly failed to supervise legal documents and uncover documents that were contrary to the law.

Therefore they could not make proposals to the assembly to amend, supplement or reject them.

The NA committees agreed in their own self assessments that their supervision of legal documents was mainly focused on doing as many as possible - then meeting deadlines instead of going into specific details raised in each document.

Improving the capacity and responsibility of the NA committees is of vital importance to the operation of the NA in the coming term.

As many as 55 law projects were approved during the 12th National Assembly, half of which were amended and supplemented.

Duong forecast the coming NA term would give priority to amending and supplementing laws already approved instead of creating new ones. He said this would raise the quality of the decisions.

The deputy country director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Christopher Bahuet, said the number of laws should not be the criteria for assessing the performance of the National Assembly.

"The quality of the law and the implementation of the law are most important at the moment," he said.

The workshop, organized by the Institute for Legislative Studies and the UNDP, attracted specialists from institutes and universities, NA members and managers as well as legislative staff from cities and provinces./. -VNA