Deputies will fight the freeze – Newspaper Kommersant No. 35 (7480) of 03/01/2023

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, at a plenary session of the chamber on Tuesday, named the Duma committees in which the most bills have been “stuck” since the beginning of the eighth convocation. Among them are committees on international affairs (as Kommersant was explained in the Duma, due to the specifics of international treaties) and on health protection, headed by Dmitry Khubezov, who had been in the zone of a special military operation for a long time.

Viacheslav Volodin began the meeting on February 28 by reading out a statement prepared by the Duma apparatus on the number of “draft bills in committees ‘without movement’ since the beginning of the eighth convocation.” This part of the meeting was held behind closed doors, although earlier the leadership of the Duma justified the cessation of the Internet broadcast of the plenary sessions and the partial cessation of the broadcast for parliamentary journalists solely on the issues of “legislative support for the special operation.”

Most of the “hanging” documents turned out to be in the Committee on Legislation (143), but the majority of initiatives traditionally pass through it (362 projects under consideration). As a Kommersant source in the Duma explained, this committee has a lot of “political” bills, such as, for example, on local self-government, which was “slowed down” by the presidential administration in connection with the emergence of new regions.

In second place is the committee on economic policy (32 projects out of 70), in third place is on transport (27 out of 51). At the same time, the share of projects “without movement” of the total number of initiatives under consideration is especially high in the committees for international affairs (62.5%, 5 out of 8), for the development of the Far East and the Arctic (60%, 3 out of 5), for transport ( almost 53%, 27 out of 51), health (50%, 19 out of 38), education (50%, 12 out of 24) and tourism (50%, 2 out of 4).

The Committee on Nationalities has the fewest bills under consideration – only one. Commenting on these data, Mr. Volodin, in particular, noted that the head of the international affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, is also the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and its faction, so he needs help with the committee, said a participant in the discussion. According to Kommersant’s source in the committee, “stuck” projects can neither be accepted nor rejected due to the specifics of international treaties.

The speaker also mentioned the committee on health protection, whose head Dmitry Khubezov (United Russia) spent a lot of time in the war zone since the beginning of the NVO and fully returned to work in the committee only from the new year.

In total, 402 out of 1369 draft laws “stuck” in the committees, and only 72 of them were submitted by the government.

Recall that at the beginning of last year, Vyacheslav Volodin proposed introducing KPIs for committees, but deputies have not yet developed them. The head of the control committee, Oleg Morozov (ER), who is responsible for this assignment, told Kommersant at the end of 2022 that in the autumn session the work of the committees was evaluated in a “test mode” and that deputies “should not chase after formal indicators.”

The speaker intends to regularly discuss such statistics on committees with his colleagues in the chamber.

And those committee members who are not ready to improve their performance will not be rewarded, Mr. Volodin hinted at the meeting, the deputies told Kommersant.

Mr. Volodin explained the need for this work by the desire to increase “the effectiveness of legislative work in connection with the tasks of the NVO and the President’s message,” says one of Kommersant’s interlocutors. It should be noted that Vyacheslav Volodin spoke about “increasing the efficiency of the work of the State Duma” from the moment he was elected speaker in the fall of 2016: it was then that the deputies began to fight against the “legislative blockages” that had accumulated over previous convocations.

Mikhail Romanov (ER), the first deputy head of the control committee, explains the “hanging” of projects in the committees by the fact that, in connection with the SVO, the legislative agenda is changing and many initiatives are losing their relevance. In addition, he says, the drafts submitted by the deputies of the previous convocation have accumulated: they also need to be considered, but not in a priority order.

The reasons for the “freezing” of draft laws are usually associated with the complexity of their enforcement, says Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the RASO Political Technologies Committee: the need for additional budgetary funds, the lack of optimal wording of legal structures that take into account the opinions of parties, regions, business, etc. Therefore, according to in his opinion, sometimes it is better not to accept projects than to accept them. The task of each committee is to ensure that there are no initiatives in its portfolio that have been idle for years, the expert agrees, since while the committee contains, for example, the opposition’s populist initiatives, “it is promoting them, and the public froze in anticipation – suddenly they will accept it.”

Maria Makutina