Party chairmen Laurens Dassen (Volt), Jesse Klaver (GroenLinks) and Pieter Omtzigt asked Minister Hanke Bruins Slot (Internal Affairs) for clarification on Monday. Did the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport from the Rutte III cabinet use an iCloud email address for his work as a minister, which emerged in the messages from the Wob about the approach to the corona approach? the three groups want to know.
The questioners are referring to documents about the mouth mask deal that were recently released by the Ministry of Finance after a Wob request from de Volkskrant. On the basis of this, the newspaper wrote that health care minister De Jonge has urged a senior official to contact Van Lienden to have him supplied with face masks.
‘Secure and complete’
“Suspects are suspicions. That’s why we ask these questions. We want to know the details,” Omtzigt told ANP when asked. “We ask ministers to abide by the law.”
The groups also want to be sure that messages via De Jonge’s iCloud e-mail address are stored “securely and completely” and are made available for Wob requests and a parliamentary inquiry into corona policy.
Omtzigt refers to a ruling from the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State from 2019. In short, this means that text messages and WhatsApp messages that ministers send from their business and/or private telephones fall under the Wob if those messages are sent. were sent as part of the work.
In 2016, then-Minister Henk Kamp of Economic Affairs ran into problems after it turned out that he frequently used his gmail account for work. This was at odds with the government guidelines at the time. The current Government Handbook “strongly discourages” using a private email account or messaging apps for work-related purposes.
The three party leaders also want to know whether there are other ministers from the previous and current cabinet who use private email addresses and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram for their work, and if so, who they are.