Allowance affair

The cabinet doubles the waiting time for allowance parents

The state is making allowance parents wait months longer for a decision on their additional compensation, in order to end up in court proceedings less often.

Emiel Hakkenes June 23, 2024, 10:00 PM

Victims of the benefits scandal who ask for compensation for their additional damage will now have to wait up to one year to find out. That's in a legislative proposal that outgoing Secretary of State Aukje de Vries (Surcharges and Customs) has sent to the House of Representatives. Currently, the maximum allowed waiting period for this group is six months. With this measure, De Vries wants to reduce the number of legal proceedings against the Implementation Organization for Recovery of Surcharges (UHT).

Just under 70,000 people have joined the UHT reported as a victim of the benefits scandal. They got into major financial difficulties between 2005 and 2019 because the tax authorities wrongly accused them of fraud with childcare allowance.

38 million euros in penalty payments

The UHT uses a “first test” to determine whether someone has actually been duped. If so, this victim will receive an amount of 30,000 euros — the so-called Catshuis scheme. The victim's file is then subject to an 'integral assessment'. If this shows that someone has suffered more than 30,000 euros in damage, they will receive an additional amount. Victims who believe that this amount does not yet cover the damage can apply for additional compensation. Around a quarter of all victims do this.

The “allowance parent” must receive an answer to that request within six months, but in many cases this does not happen. The parent can then declare the UHT in default, whereby the judge can impose a penalty payment on the UHT. This has happened more than 30,000 times and has cost the treasury 38 million euros in penalty payments so far.

Judges have previously complained about the amount of these cases they have to settle. They called on the UHT — and thus the responsible Secretary of State for Surcharges and Customs — to do something about this. The answer from Secretary of State De Vries is now: extending the legal decision period. From now on, the UHT will have one year to decide on an application. If that fails, the period may be extended by another year.

From six weeks to thirty months

These new deadlines will only apply to new claims for compensation for additional damage. They can still be submitted until 1 January next year. Secretary of State De Vries planned to make the doubled waiting times also apply to parents who are already applying, but she became at this point called back by the Council of State, who reviewed the bill.

De Vries is also abandoning another intention on the advice of the Council of State. That intention was not about applications, but about appeals from parents who disagree with a UHT decision. Just like when deciding on applications, the Secretary of State also wanted to give the UHT more time to process appeals. That period is now at least six weeks; that would be a maximum of thirty months. According to the Council of State, this is contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to “a fair and public hearing of their case, within a reasonable period of time”.

Now that her bill goes less far than intended, De Vries writes to the House of Representatives, a lot of money (“budgetary adjustments”) will remain needed to pay penalty payments for late decisions. The Secretary of State hopes that the House of Representatives will debate her bill “soon after the summer recess”.

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