As the corona crisis lasted longer, the cabinet lost some contact with society. In the first phase, most people adhered well to the corona measures, but less and less as time went on. These measures subsequently became stricter because they were poorly enforced. This was said by former Prime Minister Dick Schoof, the highest official at the Ministry of Justice and Security at the time, when he was interrogated by the parliamentary corona inquiry committee this Friday morning.
According to Schoof, the government has “insufficiently taken into account” social, social and economic consequences when deciding on the measures.
In crisis situations, in the first phase you have to accept that you are making decisions with a complete lack of information
According to him, it also turned out not to be possible to properly measure these effects, unlike, for example, the shortage of IC beds and the number of infections. Schoof: “Closing schools, banning sports by young people and stopping club life did not fit well into an assessment matrix. But you felt that the measures had major social consequences, and that they were increasing. There was less and less understanding for lockdowns, school closures and the curfew.”
Dismissing opponents of the measures as wimps didn’t help either, Schoof said. “If you put people away, you lose them.”
Regarding crisis communication, Schoof said that the press conferences were starting to lose their effect in the long term due to “always the same message” and “fatigue among the public.” He also said that the effect of “everything that social media is said about the crisis,” was underestimated: “Conspiracy theories and fake news spread rapidly. Maybe next time you should look for a role for influencers, for example.”
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Ministry was not well prepared
Two days after the first Dutch corona infection, Schoof started working as Secretary General at Justice and Security. That was on March 1, 2020, Schoof came from the AIVD intelligence service. The ‘crisis decision-making manual’ immediately played a crucial role, he told the committee – the word ‘manual’ came up frequently in his answers.
The problem, said Schoof, was that it was written “only in general terms” and “never focused on a pandemic.” And, he added: “In crisis situations, you have to accept in the first phase that you are making decisions with a total lack of information. You never have information that you really need.”
According to him, the chaotic decision-making in the first period of the crisis was therefore inevitable. “It was a lot that came down to everyone.” According to the former Prime Minister, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) in particular was not prepared. “They completely contradicted themselves. It took a while before VWS had organized it properly officially.” The government’s crisis management is aimed at a short crisis, Schoof said, not a long-term one.
Much resistance to Covid official
The interrogation went smoothly. The former prime minister was verbose, used many official terms and gave few concrete examples – the committee hardly asked about them. Schoof also had difficulty taking a stand. For example, he initially seemed critical of the regular Torentjes meeting in Prime Minister Rutte’s office, because too small a group of people exchanged ideas there. But he then argued that such informal consultation was also of great importance during the crisis.
The interrogation also made clear how much resistance the highest official, Mark Roscam Abbing, encountered within the cabinet. Roscam Abbing, who has been concerned with the impact of the corona policy on society since the autumn of 2020, said during his own interrogation on Monday that Minister Hugo de Jonge (VWS, CDA) was “not his biggest sponsor”.
Actually, Hugo wants [de Jonge] do it all yourself
Dick Schoof emailed during that period that Minister De Jonge became “restless” by the arrival of the top official, who became involved in the decision-making, alongside NCTV chairman Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg and De Jonge himself. “Hugo actually wants to do it all himself,” Schoof wrote in an email, from which the committee quoted.
Minister Ferd Grapperhaus (Justice and Security, CDA) was also unhappy with the arrival of Roscam Abbing: Grapperhaus did not want to be “complicit” in his arrival, Schoof emailed. The former Prime Minister himself stated that he had “definitely seen the usefulness and necessity” of the arrival of Roscam Abbing.
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