Ministry of Justice: There are problems of not checking what should be checked and irregular checking of what should not be checked in the administrative inspections involving enterprises
Administrative inspections on enterprises should truly achieve “neither overstepping nor neglecting their duties”. On January 7th, the State Council Information Office held a regular briefing, and Deputy Minister of Justice Hu Weilie introduced the “Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Strictly Regulating Administrative Inspections on Enterprises”. Hu Weilie expressed that administrative inspections play an important role in guiding and regulating enterprises’ legitimate operations, as well as preventing and rectifying illegal activities. For issues in food and drug, work safety and other fields, those that need to be inspected should not only be inspected, but also be strictly conducted to ensure that inspections are not just a formality.
In recent years, the State Council has made a series of important deployments around improving the quality and efficiency of administrative law enforcement, such as solidly promoting the three-year action to improve the quality of administrative law enforcement, strengthening the formulation and management of administrative discretion standards, regulating the setting and implementation of administrative penalties, which have effectively improved the level of strict, standardized, fair and civilized law enforcement. However, at the same time, the irregularity or even negligence and arbitrary law enforcement still occur in some places and departments. Hu Weilie introduced that recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Strictly Regulating Administrative Inspections on Enterprises”, which comprehensively regulated some prominent issues in current administrative inspections on enterprises.
The ten measures stipulated in the “Opinions” are directly targeted at prominent issues in administrative inspections that are strongly reflected by enterprises and the masses. Hu Weilie said that in response to the problem of excessive inspection frequency reflected by enterprises, the “Opinions” requires determining inspection methods reasonably, non-on-site methods should not be used for inspections in enterprises. For inspection standards that困扰 enterprises, such as non-transparency and inconsistency, the “Opinions” clearly requires publishing inspection standards to the public, and actively coordinating conflicts among inspection standards among different departments to avoid confusing enterprises due to inconsistent standards.
Regarding how to ensure that administrative inspections on enterprises do not overstep or neglect their duties, so that inspections do not excessively affect the normal operations of enterprises while ensuring necessary inspections are effectively carried out, Hu Weilie believes that administrative inspections are an important way for administrative law enforcement bodies to perform their management responsibilities in accordance with the law, playing a crucial role in guiding and regulating enterprises’ legitimate operations as well as preventing and rectifying illegal activities.
“That is to say, we need to guide enterprises to operate according to law through inspections, and also investigate and deal with illegal activities through inspections in a timely manner. However, in practice, there are indeed problems such as not inspecting what should be inspected and inspecting what should not be inspected,” said Hu Weilie. The key to implementing various measures in the “Opinions” lies in how to grasp the “degree” of administrative inspections. The “Opinions” issued this time are mainly to contain prominent issues in administrative inspections and create a relaxed development environment for enterprises.
He also stated that for issues of great concern to the people, particularly those closely related to their vital interests such as food and drug safety and work safety, especially for complaints or reports from the public or tasks assigned by other departments, those that need to be inspected should not only be inspected but also be strictly conducted to ensure that inspections are effective and not just a formality. Through effective inspections, people’s life and health security can be effectively maintained and guaranteed.
Hu Weilie also emphasized that it is necessary to avoid the tendency of “avoiding responsibility” inspections, preventing the misconceptions of “being relieved of responsibility after inspection, being held responsible without inspection”. Administrative law enforcement bodies should accurately grasp the spiritual requirements of the “Opinions”, truly achieve neither overstepping nor neglecting their duties during inspections, neither interfering with the normal production and operation of enterprises nor ensuring necessary inspections can be effectively carried out.
