The House of Representatives is temporarily pulling the plug on the parliamentary inquiry into the corona approach. After criticism of the approach and the workload, the research is put on hold. A new report from the OVV is awaited first. Whether there will ever be a parliamentary inquiry – including hearings of Rutte and De Jonge – about the crisis approach is therefore uncertain.
Chamber President Vera Bergkamp announced the postponement in a letter to parliament on Tuesday afternoon. The run-up to the corona survey is extremely difficult. After the preparatory investigation by the temporary committee, many parties now refuse to delegate a member of the House of Representatives for the permanent investigation work. That investigation will take three years, in the meantime there are still elections.
The parties do not want to participate because of the workload and the ongoing investigation by the Dutch Safety Board (OVV), but there is also criticism of the preparatory committee’s approach in the corridors. This includes the term ‘wappie club’, referring to the corona-critical committee members of Forum and BVNL. Today, Professor Bert van den Braak, among others, suggested on this news site to pick up the corona research a little later, so that the current survey into fraud policy can be properly conducted first. This way, the workload will be better spread and politicians will have a more complete picture of the crisis approach when the latest OVV report is ready. Part three of the OVV study is expected later this year.
There is currently very little enthusiasm in the House for survey work. As a result, the goal of a ‘broadly composed committee’ is unattainable. Only PVV, Forum for Democracy, Den Haan Group and Group van Haga want to immediately send someone for the mega job. A large part of the House of Representatives – VVD, D66, CDA and GroenLinks – prefers to await the third and final part of the investigation by the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) first.
Whether it will ever come to the parliamentary investigation, including public hearings of key players such as Prime Minister Rutte and Minister De Jonge, is therefore uncertain.
‘After dealing with the OVV report, these factions expect to be able to better understand what this means for the content of the survey, the timeline of the survey and the availability of members,’ Bergkamp writes in her letter on Tuesday. ‘That is why we intend to take stock of the willingness again after dealing with the third research report from the OVV’.
Little enthusiasm
Many parties consider it very important to properly investigate the largest medical crisis in modern times, but the approach and research design of the preparatory committee by no means convinces all parties. “It won’t work out with that wappie club,” an insider of the coalition fulminated earlier against this news site. GroenLinks MP Lisa Westerveld called it ‘a dilemma’: ,,As a group we have no room to delegate someone, but I do have substantive objections. The question in the proposal is quite one-sided. It is now mainly about whether the Netherlands did not take too many lockdown measures, but the question is also whether we did not do too little? Have we really done enough to prevent lung covid and protect the vulnerable?”
The parliamentary inquiry will last three years and is estimated to cost €7.5 million.
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