Recovery from the Allowance Affair grows into a very expensive, official juggernaut

Analysis
Recovery from the Allowance Affair grows into a very expensive, official juggernaut
Administrative law The recovery operation is getting more and more traits from the Benefits affair itself. The Council of State is pulling the brakes.

Folkert Jensma August 27, 2023 at 8:19pm
Reading time 2 minutes
Outgoing Secretary of State Aukje de Vries (Allowances, VVD) in the House of Representatives during a debate about the Allowance affair.
When compensating the victims of the Benefits Affair, many administrative conventions are being overhauled. Or they just get a kick.
This was also the case last week, when the Supreme Administrative Court accused the Cabinet and House of “very consciously” making unattainable promises to victims. Namely, that every objection or appeal is decided within three months — a period that is so often not met that the court in Utrecht only extended it to twelve months. Especially to limit the stacking of penalty payments, which should
are paid to the submitter if instalments are exceeded.

The Council of State rejected the extension of the decision deadlines in principle last week. The legislator must solve that himself, not the judge, was the conclusion. This automatically put outgoing Secretary of State Aukje de Vries (Finance, VVD) in the spotlight. Whether she wanted to end the large-scale leakage of penalty payments.

“Unprecedented injustice”
For some time now, the cabinet has been going all-out with people, resources and procedures to compensate allowance parents. The Allowance affair started roughly from 2017 with false fraud suspicions from several tens of thousands of parents, mostly based on ethnic prejudice in the tax authorities, followed by a harsh recovery policy. The Parliamentary Interrogation Committee summarized the affair in the title of its report; Unprecedented Injustice.

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The government is paying more than 9 million for dealing with the Benefits Affair too slowly. Meanwhile, the recovery operation is beginning to show signs of the Benefits Affair itself.
With proliferation as the central theme — of penalty payments, but also of compensation arrangements with associated expanding official organizations. For penalty payments alone, the cabinet will have budgeted around 60 million euros in the coming years; to be paid to citizens who have to wait too long for a decision on compensation.

ANP ROBIN UTRECHT
The State Secretary's Progress Report, published in June, shows that the number of parents who believe they are entitled to compensation will probably rise to more than 68,000 this year, 5,000 more than expected last year. By the way, after a first official test, 70 percent lost weight again this year: they appeared to have no right to it.
Meanwhile, it should not be ruled out that there were many 'calculating' citizens among them — those who really know they have no right to anything, but are actually targeting a penalty payment for “not taking timely decisions”. Such “casino litigation” is on the rise in administrative law, often fueled by professional objection agencies.

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Recovery operation on the Allowance affair ready by the end of 2026?

Cabinet backs down again
On average, half of the applicants appear to be eligible for compensation. So far, this concerns a total of around 29,500 parents. The latest Spring Memorandum has earmarked an additional 1.3 billion euros for the recovery operation; the total costs are now estimated at no less than 7.1 billion.
Of that amount, approximately 5.1 billion is intended for direct compensation to the victims, an amount that must be distributed equitably. Implementation costs are rising. In the first two years of the recovery operation, 2021 and 2022, respectively, 18 percent and 23 percent of the recovery budget went to the civil service: staff and housing. That has now grown to 30 percent, partly due to the use of external organizations.

Tight labor market
The number of recovery officers, initially estimated at 1,700, should reach 2,350 next year. Almost four times as many employees as the entire Education Inspectorate. The objection and appeal departments should grow from 300 to 660 jobs. However, this expansion is lagging behind “due to a tight labor market”. The last objections from parents should be completed by the end of 2026
are.
Secretary of State De Vries writes to the House that she wants to accelerate and improve via “alternative routes”. For example, mediation and (civil) settlement agreements prefer to administrative proceedings. With such a civil agreement, the parent should be given “more control”, she hopes. In addition, she expects time savings: such an agreement cannot be appealed.
She also promises that the government will assume 'causality' earlier, between the damage and the benefits incident. Adverse financial consequences for parents of court decisions are limited as much as possible. When the state wins and gets money
reclaiming is waived. The Secretary of State also suggests more “additional routes” out of court, including with external guidance, intended to lower the threshold and increase speed. But she also sees a disadvantage: “The effect may be that more parents than expected sign up, which has an effect on the speed with which everyone is helped.”
So every offer triggers demand — and thus more applicants. Which, in turn, must be assessed.