It was not yet very explicit, but between the lines, Jaap van Dissel’s message seemed clear: the social, economic and social consequences should have been taken into account when taking the far-reaching corona measures. Not within the Outbreak Management Team (OMT), said the former chairman of that advisory body, because “it does not belong there. That was not our expertise. But we were very much in favor of the cabinet taking it into account.”
Van Dissel did not want to say whether the cabinet has done this sufficiently. He did point to the Social Impact Team, the counterpart of the OMT, which was established by the cabinet in September 2022 and advised on the social and economic consequences. Van Dissel, one of the key players in the corona crisis: “At that moment we were already almost closing down. The question was: who turns off the lights and when?”
Van Dissel’s comments were perhaps the most critical during the first public hearings of the parliamentary corona inquiry committee. Seven of the 47 witnesses, who told their stories under oath, have come by – there are still eight weeks to go. The interrogations have not yielded any truly new facts so far, nor have there been many exciting moments. The content of the conversations varied widely, from the role of the House of Representatives (with former Speaker of the House Arib) to the spread of the virus (virologist Marion Koopmans) and the experiences with the first corona weeks in the crisis area of North Brabant (Jack Mikkers, mayor of ‘s-Hertogenbosch).
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Not much self-reflection so far
However, some lines can be distinguished. For example, there is little evidence of self-reflection on one’s own role in the pandemic, even though it is six years after it started. Questions were regularly passed on (“You really have to go to the Prime Minister/Hugo de Jonge/Mr Van Dissel for that”). Many witnesses consistently made a distinction between what was known then and “the knowledge of today.” Former Minister for Medical Care Bruno Bruins (VVD) said: “I prefer to stick to the common sense of the time. With the information you had at that time.” In the early days – Bruins was overloaded after three weeks of the corona pandemic – the cabinet had done what was necessary, he thought.
This was also the opinion of Ernst van Koesveld, then Director General of Long-term Care at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. He called the national ban on visiting the elderly in nursing homes “a tough but still sensible decision.” It soon became apparent during the pandemic that children of nursing home residents were sometimes barely able to say goodbye to their parents when they died. There was also initially a shortage of protective equipment in nursing homes, such as face masks and aprons – they came after hospitals in their distribution. Van Koesveld denied that long-term care was completely “snowed under” by overcrowded hospitals. “We were fully engaged in this day in and day out.” He made a comparison with the media and politics, where “more attention was paid to acute care.”
Jan Kluytmans during the interrogation.
Remko de Waal/ANP
Khadija Arib walks into the public hearings.
Remko de Waal/ANP
Jaap van Dissel during his interrogation.
BART MAAT
OMT had no regard for side effects
Professor of microbiology Jan Kluytmans was critical of the OMT of which he himself was a member. He said, just like Van Dissel a few days later, that the OMT mainly paid attention to the medical-epidemiological side. The OMT had hardly any knowledge about side effects, Kluytmans said, only “sideways”. He advised using a “broader OMT” in the next crisis.
Kluytmans also pointed out that in those first weeks the urgency of the crisis hardly penetrated beyond his own province of North Brabant, because, for example, no infection was found in Groningen during research. The RIVM was also not yet aware of the urgency, he said. The House of Representatives was also not prepared for the corona crisis, said former House Speaker Arib. “There was no crisis plan for how we as the House of Representatives should deal with a pandemic. There were only crisis plans for, for example, cybercrime, security and terrorism.” That is why there was great chaos in the first weeks and many MPs did not want to come to the House for fear of contamination. Arib doubted whether a crisis plan would have made sense: “You can have all kinds of plans and protocols, but you are dealing with a crisis and measures that take effect immediately. Then you do not first look at what is in a plan.”
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Commission is having a hard time
The committee of inquiry itself clearly still needs to warm up. Committee member Annelotte Lammers (Markuszower Group) often seemed to read her questions out loud and rarely asked further questions. This sometimes also applied to the rest of the committee, for example when it came to the ‘containment strategy’ of the virus. According to former minister Bruins, containment was the goal of government policy in the beginning – a strategy that was quickly replaced by ‘controlled spread’. In any case, the committee had a hard time with Bruins, who looked defensive. His interview lasted less than two hours, while the interrogations allow three hours and that time is usually fully utilized. The committee visibly failed to get Bruins to reflect more critically.
The committee also had a hard time with Van Dissel. He gave more lectures than answers and almost took over the direction of the interrogation with comments such as: “I think you mean that (…)” and “I think you are going to ask it that way, so I am already giving an example myself” and “I think I have to correct you.” When asked whether the non-medical effects of the corona measures had been sufficiently taken into account, he bounced back: “That is your job to find out.”
The composition of the committee gets in the way. There are no heavyweights in it. With the exception of two (chairman Daan de Kort of the VVD and GroenLinks-PvdA member Songül Mutluer), the committee has hardly any political experience. Also, four of the five members have only been on the committee for a few months and have therefore missed all the closed preliminary discussions and examination of documents over the past two years. Only De Kort has been there since the beginning, February 2024.
At the end of her interrogation, Arib gave the committee the message not to take the wrong approach. She pointed to the emphasis that seems to be placed on “learning lessons and looking ahead” – often reiterated by the chairman. Arib: “I miss the emphasis on truth-finding and accountability. How were decisions made? Who is responsible for what? Accountability is extremely important, especially when it comes to corona and its impact on citizens. The distrust is already so great.”
Next week, the committee can take its message to heart and apply it to the second main character in the crisis: former Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD), among others, will visit.
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The live blog about the parliamentary inquiry into corona policy