Three minutes after midnight, the mailbox of GroenLinks MP and corona spokesperson Lisa Westerveld was full. 317 pages of letters to parliament, evaluations, reports, advice and reflections sent to the House of Representatives in the night of Tuesday 14 to Wednesday 15 December, the outgoing minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health, CDA). That evening, the cabinet announced in a press conference that it would extend the evening lockdown and close the schools a week earlier, pending more information about the rapidly advancing Omikron variant. The next day the House of Representatives would debate it.
The time Westerveld then had to read all those pages, in order to understand the cabinet’s considerations and to decide what she thought of it? Exactly one hour and forty minutes: the duration of the train journey that Westerveld made early Wednesday morning from her hometown Nijmegen to The Hague. She then immediately entered the technical briefing of RIVM director Jaap van Dissel. During that briefing, her employee wrote a speech for the corona debate that started half an hour after the briefing and lasted almost eleven hours.
Actually, says Westerveld, that is far too little time to do her job well. “The controlling function of the House is too limited on the corona file. There is a lack of time to explore files in depth, everything is constantly changing. And there is not enough time to adjust policy, because you have to discuss motions with colleagues.”
Discomfort
Two years after the House first debated the coronavirus, the discomfort within the House about its own role is increasing. Because as it went in mid-December, so it has been for two years. Can the Chamber become more powerful?
As a healthcare minister, De Jonge was sometimes surprised at how often and for how long the House of Representatives debated corona policy. Those debates, he said at the end of November 2020 in NRC“distract from the work that the cabinet has to do”. They would also place too heavy a burden on the departments involved in combating the corona virus.
Also read this profile of Ernst Kuipers: A man of numbers who thinks quickly and makes decisions quickly
MPs see something else: a parliament that has little control over the drastic measures taken by the cabinet against the corona virus. According to them, this is mainly due to the order in which the cabinet takes decisions. First, the medical experts of the Outbreak Management Team (OMT) give advice. That, Rutte said several times, is “sacred” and the cabinet does not deviate from it only to a limited extent. The decisions are then announced to the Netherlands in a press conference.
The result is a policy of fait accomplis. The House only debates the measures after the press conference, which often have already taken effect by that time. “If the cabinet announces something in a press conference,” says SGP leader and corona spokesperson Kees van der Staaij, “it is very difficult for the House of Representatives to change that.” When the House of Representatives debates the reopening of the catering industry this Wednesday, the catering industry will already be open.
The consequence of the corona decision-making: a policy of fait accomplis
The House only adjusted measures on details. The curfew came into effect half an hour later, the shops at Schiphol also had to close, no corona pass would apply on terraces. But there were no major changes, let alone that the entire corona strategy was turned around. Despite regular criticism of the timing of measures, they almost always received broad support in the House.
Westerveld: “The House is waiting and looking at what the cabinet comes up with. As a result, the cabinet sometimes seems to have become overconfident, but they will get the majority anyway.”
At the end of last year there appeared to be a limit to what that overconfidence can achieve. De Jonge had announced the introduction of 2G in a press conference, with which only vaccinated and recovered people would have access to culture and catering, among other things. The Chamber had not yet discussed it at the time. De Jonge later withdrew the bill when a majority appeared to be lacking. According to Van der Staaij, this shows that democratic procedures still function soundly: “The cabinet is not taking very large steps that cannot be justified politically and legally.”
‘veil’
Can the House speak earlier? On Tuesday, she unanimously adopted a motion to debate in future before the measures come into effect. That wish was already there when the Corona Act was introduced, so-called ‘veil’. The House would only decide afterwards in ‘a very urgent circumstance’. But in practice it always is. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and Security, which is preparing the measures, cannot give a reason to deviate from the spirit of the law: “There was never any question of a curtain.”
However, the cabinet is working on a different way of decision-making, it announced in mid-December. This method would be introduced from mid-January, but according to the spokesperson, it will take a while. It is still unclear what exactly needs to change.
These innovations have already cast their shadows in recent days. Whenever OMT advice leaked out, PVV MP Fleur Agema or GroenLinkser Westerveld requested disclosure. This weekend, the coalition backed such a request for the first time, leading to a majority in favour. The OMT advice was therefore made public on Monday evening. For the first time, the whole of the Netherlands could read exactly what the OMT had advised and why, before Prime Minister Rutte and the Minister of Health announced the relaxation. That was, according to Minister Ernst Kuipers (D66), ‘with a view to the future of the decision-making process’.