Cabinet: new method of recovering surcharges not a done deal yet
NOS News•Tuesday, May 14, 5:24 PM
Cabinet: new method of recovering surcharges not a done deal yet
Marleen de Rooy
Political reporter
It is not yet a foregone conclusion that a new method to compensate victims of the benefits affair will be implemented more quickly. That's what Secretary of State De Vries says.
She thus responds to reports that the costs via this method would amount to billions. De Vries emphasizes that this is a pilot that the cabinet will not decide until the end of this month. Nothing is certain at the moment, says De Vries.
The Equal Recovery Foundation, founded by Princess Laurentien and the Benefits Service, has so far assumed that the “Laurentien method” would continue. An amount of 1.2 billion euros has also already been made available in the Spring Memorandum.
The method to compensate victims more quickly was devised together with victims. Yesterday, a secret note that the NOS saw showed that for the recovery along this route. a billion dollar noose is imminent. Officials wonder whether the large amounts associated with the compensation are still explainable. On average, victims receive 128,000 euros in compensation via the new method.
Calculations in the secret note that the NOS saw show that this way, the operation could be 5 billion euros more expensive. De Vries does not want to go into those amounts.
However, she acknowledges receiving signals from officials. She therefore wants to make a careful decision about the sequel. According to her, nothing is yet certain about the continuation of the recovery operation. The government is still going to take a good look at that. De Vries: “When announcing this pilot, we always said that it should be explainable. Scalable, too. “
According to De Vries, the pilot can still be stopped. “There are dilemmas that have already been outlined in advance and we will just have to make a choice about them. I think the most important thing is that we try to do the best we can to do justice to the parents, what we did to them. The money is secondary, but it must be explainable to other parents and to society.”
Major differences
There are also questions about the differences between the amounts that the Van Laurentien Foundation awards to parents and the amounts paid out by the so-called Actual Damage Commission. These differences are sometimes over 100,000 euros.
VVD MP Roeling Kamminga says about this: “It cannot be the case that one route provides more compensation than the other, it is time for that to be clarified.”
NSC leader Omtzigt says he is “very unpleasantly surprised” at the news that the recovery operation is becoming even billions more expensive. “We now have the nasty problem that people who have been severely duped end up at the back of the queue.” He calls it a “difficult process to control” for MPs. He wants an explanation from the cabinet and says it does not make negotiations easier at the formation.
Secretary of State de Vries says that the cabinet will soon issue a letter to the House. The intention is that the outgoing Council of Ministers will decide how to proceed at the end of this month.
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