Chancellor of Justice concerned about shortcomings in legislative work

Jonkka has to fix government proposals on weekly basis

Jaakko Jonkka

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“There are shortcomings or mistakes in 10-20 per cent of all matters that come before the government for decisions”, says Chancellor of Justice Jaakko Jonkka.
      The figure is alarming, as the national government is one of the bodies in Finland, which has a high level of decision making authority.
      A number of errors ascribed to tight schedules often remain in legislative initiatives issued by the government, which the office of the Chancellor of Justice then has to fix.
     
Each year about 1,700 formal decisions are made at plenary sessions of the government. There are 150 different types of decisions, and only a few of them involve proposals for legislation.
      Jonkka is worried about a trend that he sees in which tight schedules in the ministries and among civil servants have made it necessary to delegate the drafting of proposals away from the experts, to lower office personnel.
      An even greater problem than the technical shortcomings is that the government itself has been careless in drafting the reasoning behind its initiatives. Jonkka drew attention to that matter already in June last year, and he says that the situation has not improved since then.
      “Sometimes the reasons given for proposed legislative change are scattered and scarce. The impact of a bill and the alternatives have not been evaluated deeply enough, or weight in a balanced manner”, Jonkka says.
      He emphasises that the credibility of legislative work largely depends on whether or not the deeds and choices behind a law are argued in a competent and credible manner.
      It has been noted in the office of the Chancellor of Justice that at times, the content of a bill has been set, and argumentation to back it has come later.
     
At the office of the Chancellor of Justice, Risto Heikkitaipale, head of the section dealing with government matters, suggests that today’s mechanical and hasty work culture leads to many kinds of mistakes that have not been made before.
      He also criticises the problems linked with inadequacies found in government proposals.
      He does not wish to single out any individual ministries as particularly problematic.
     
One example of carelessness noted by Heikkitaipale involved the merger late last year of the Product control Agency for Welfare and Health and the National Authority for Medicolegal Affairs, which were combined to form the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health.
      “It became necessary to put forward corrective proposals the following week on laws which the President had signed the previous Friday”, he says.
      The problem concerned the exact date that the measure would take effect.
      Parliament had deliberately left open the time that the bills would take effect, and the President decided on that.
      However, the ministry nevertheless proposed that all of the laws should take effect from the beginning of the year, even though the original intent was for three out of four of the laws not to come into force until the following year.
     
Heikkitaipale says that Parliament can sometimes be working on two proposals for changing the same clauses. This happened at the end of last year over rules concerning sickness insurance regulations.
      The final outcome of the processing of the legislative proposal went against the national budget, which Parliament had already passed.
      Now that mistake is to be fixed with yet another government initiative.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Chancellor of Justice criticises drafting reference price law for prescription medicines (19.6.2008)

Links:
  The Office of the Chancellor of Justice

Helsingin Sanomat