“It could happen again tomorrow,” the parliamentary inquiry committee that investigated the runaway fight against fraud notes gloomily. The patterns that formed the basis of the tough approach, in which innocent citizens were mistaken for fraudsters, have not yet been broken. Repetition is lurking.
Over the past two years, the committee of Members of Parliament investigated the derailed fraud policy, which led to the Benefits Scandal and also caused great misery in unemployment and other benefits. In a “hardened political and social climate (…) people have been crushed,” the final report concludes, Blind to people and lawwhich was presented on Monday.
The committee of inquiry cracks down on hard facts about the actions of successive cabinets. The ministers barely paid attention to the people affected by their legislation, considered political interests and financial considerations more important than the human dimension and from the first moment ignored warnings from civil servants and supervisors who saw that things were going wrong.
Parrot circuit
Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) is not identified as the main culprit, although the committee notes that the approach to fraud became “repressive” in character from his first cabinet in 2010. Not only ministers and state secretaries are affected. MPs offered too little contradiction or even chased the merry-go-round of fuss and suspicion in a ‘parrot circuit’ with journalists, the committee members write. And in places where a citizen should be able to obtain his or her rights, such as the highest judges of the Council of State, the shutters were closed. Judges’ concerns were ignored for years.
With this conclusion, the committee puts an end to the idea that everything could have turned out differently if the so-called Bulgarian fraud had not received so much attention or if one memo had not been hidden away in a deep drawer. The blindness was simply too great for that and the rot was too deep. For that reason, and because there has been too little reflection on one’s own mistakes, according to the committee, things can go wrong again.
The why question
It could have been an incorrectly entered zip code. Or a date of birth that had been overlooked. Small mistakes, easy to fix. But in a government that wanted to rigorously detect and punish fraud with benefits and allowances, every missing piece of information could be a reason to come under a magnifying glass.
Before you knew it, you were known as a fraudster. And once caught in the clutches of the government, there was no stopping them. Once faced with refunds or high fines, debts increased and were ignored by the highest judges. According to the committee, it is extra perverse that “it is precisely the people who needed the government the most who have been hit the hardest.”
The hard conclusions of the parliamentary inquiry committee follow a year of archival research and a large number of conversations and public interrogations with victims, ministers, including Prime Minister Rutte, politicians and experts. This has allowed the committee to delve into the matter in much more detail than an earlier investigation by the House at the end of 2020, which resulted in the report Unprecedented Injustice.
While this investigation, which led to the resignation of Rutte III, tried to find out what exactly had happened, the parliamentary inquiry revolved around the question of why. How did the harsh punishments arise, where were the fundamental rights, why was no action taken?
How the fraud hunt went off the rails
To answer that question, the committee mapped out step by step how the fraud hunt went off the rails. There were major risks from the first design phase. The fact that the benefits system introduced in 2005 would work with advances that sometimes had to be partially repaid years later was asking for trouble. This also applies to the choice of the Tax Authorities as executor, always more focused on collecting money than paying out and traditionally looking for abuse.
Now the tax authorities, which also lacked people to create all the allowances, had to deal with a whole new target group: those who earned less received more money. This immediately led to problems in childcare. The amounts quickly rose to tens of thousands of euros, especially if a correction only took place after several years. And that was no exception: almost 40 percent of the childcare benefits paid had to be adjusted.
Officials who sounded the alarm in the early years were ignored. The political interests were too great, the committee found. For example, it was seen as a bigger problem that people had to wait a long time for their benefits, so the focus was on hasty payments and checking later whether a refund was necessary.
In addition, a series of ministers, encouraged by political debates and media reports about fraud, wanted to take decisive action against abuse of social services, allowances and benefits. According to officials, the actual fraud was very limited, but during the hearings of the inquiry committee, then Minister of Social Affairs Henk Kamp (VVD) explained that the cabinet did not believe those figures.
Combating had to be recouped
Another factor soon came into play: money. The urge to cut back did not only arise from the economic crisis that led to tight budgets from 2008 onwards. The survey also points to the importance of New Public Management, the management style that emerged in public administration in the 1990s and aimed to organize the government more like a business.
Ministries had to deal with business cases: the fight against fraud had to pay for itself. This became problematic when better control and information led to fewer cases of fraud, and therefore less income. In order to earn enough, civil servants started looking for fraud even more, often at the expense of staff who handled objections.
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Citizens being ground to death
The committee is also critical of the highest judges, especially the Council of State, who dismissed judges who showed leniency towards citizens who had been crushed. From 2011 to 2019, the Council of State adhered to the toughest possible approach in the Benefits Scandal.
The Council of State has still shown little self-reflection, the committee states. According to the committee, the Council of State, which also advises on legislation, should separate its judicial department.
The committee of inquiry also proposes to give the Dutch Data Protection Authority significantly more money to properly fulfill its role as a watchdog on data use, to provide MPs with more support staff and to test laws more quickly and frequently after introduction.
“It would be unforgivable if no lessons were learned from this,” the committee writes.