Discussions had already been held with scientists, researchers and doctors. There had already been a working visit to a funeral director in Uden, a school in Boekel and hospitals in Maastricht and Nieuwegein. There was even a research proposal ready.
But the question is whether the parliamentary inquiry into the corona crisis will ever take place. For the time being, there are too few political groups that have agreed to participate in the committee of inquiry, writes House Speaker Vera Bergkamp in a letter on Tuesday.
Bergkamp has therefore postponed the formation of the committee for the time being. It is desirable, she writes, that ‘the committee is based on a sufficiently broad composition of the House’. That broad composition was lacking: only PVV, Forum for Democracy, Den Haan Group and Group Van Haga had agreed to participate. The rest wait or don’t want to.
Formally, it is a practical matter. The Dutch Safety Board (OVV) has been working for some time on its own investigation into the Dutch corona approach. With the third report from the OVV approaching, Bergkamp writes, VVD, D66, CDA and GroenLinks want to wait a little longer before deciding whether they want to send MPs.
Bergkamp wants to wait for the publication of that report – probably this autumn. This would allow the parties to better ‘oversee what this means for the content of the survey, the timeline of the survey and the availability of members’.
Should we still use this tool?
Wieke Paulusma Member of parliament D66
“A parliamentary inquiry is a very heavy instrument,” says Member of Parliament Wieke Paulusma (D66) to NRC. “I expect that the third OVV report will not be thinner than the first two. Then we will ask ourselves whether we should still use this instrument.”
Read also: Polarized corona committee tries to bridge political differences
Hassle from day one
So much for the official statements. Because under the surface it has been simmering since day one in the committee that was supposed to prepare the parliamentary inquiry. This already started with the appointment of Khadija Arib as chairman last summer.
Civil servants who had had bad experiences with Arib as President of the House did not like this, after which stories in which Arib was described as intimidating and authoritarian via NRC came out. Arib left, also from the Chamber.
It was not quiet after that. Arib’s successor Mariëlle Paul (VVD) quickly said that she did not want to remain chairman for long, she told NRC. “It is better if someone from the opposition does that.” But above all, a crisis atmosphere arose around the role of corona skeptics in the committee.
Committee members accused their colleagues Pepijn van Houwelingen (Forum for Democracy) and Wybren van Haga (BVNL) of bias. They combined their work for the preparatory committee with media appearances and debates in which they flaring off the corona approach. That was not neutral, other members thought.
In the end, the commission passed. But when a research proposal was presented at the end of May, it became clear that the criticism had not subsided. GroenLinks MP Lisa Westerveld had “substantive objections”, she told it AD. For example, she thought the question was too 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, right?”
Surveys closely
It is clear that the prospect of parts of the work of the committee of inquiry – with plenty of room for conspiracy theories, a report that may contain such theories about the corona virus, with the stamp of the House of Representatives – did not sit well with many political groups.
Van Haga also has the impression that the committee will be postponed, and possibly adjusted, as a result. “Apparently they are so afraid of the outcome that they shoot it down for political reasons,” he says NRC.
Van Haga calls nonsense that he himself got in the way of the committee’s work with his debates and media appearances. “If there was a rule against it, I will. But there is no such rule,” says Van Haga. “That is just like people shouting: you are not allowed to sit in the Chamber if you are an entrepreneur. Also nonsense. That’s okay.
Rutte IV’s reign promised to be the high point of parliamentary inquiries. But after the survey on gas extraction in Groningen, things look uncertain for the other two. There is already a survey going on about fraud policy and services in response to the Supplements scandal, but VVD and CDA have quietly stepped out of that.
Work pressure and political differences were the basis for this, say MPs. Now the latest survey, into corona policy, seems to succumb to the same problems.