Chair of the allowance parents committee expelled: after only eight months due to slow processing

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Chairman of the allowance parents committee expelled after just eight months for slow processing

The government is unable to accelerate the committee that must determine the damage suffered by the most severely affected benefit parents. The chairman, who was appointed to put things in order at the beginning of the year, must leave already.

Charlotte HuismanSeptember 7, 2023, 5:49 PM

Commissiedebat over de Hersteloperatie Kinderopvangtoeslag in mei 2022. Beeld Robin van Lonkhuijsen / ANP — Commission debate on the Childcare Allowance Recovery Operation in May 2022.Image: Robin van Lonkhuijsen/ANP

The Actual Injury Committee determined the additional damage they suffered as a result of the benefits affair for 380 of the 1,900 registered parents, for example due to the loss of their job or home. On average, four cases per week are completed. Soon after the commission was set up, about two years ago, it became clear that at such a slow pace, it would take years for all parents to be compensated.

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This year, things are even slower than last year, while the number of applications is only increasing, Secretary of State Aukje de Vries wrote to the House of Representatives on Thursday. In addition, around half of the parents are still appealing against the committee's advice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlotte Huisman is a reporter for de Volkskrant and writes, among other things, about youth care and the aftermath of the benefits affair

In January, the government appointed a new chairman with the task of reviving the committee. But she was unable to expedite the processing. In addition, many allowance parents continued to feel badly treated. The bottleneck is that the committee expects parents to demonstrate a direct causal relationship between, for example, losing their job and the benefits affair. While in practice, it appears that years later, this can hardly be proven.

New Chairman, New Committee

Due to her dissatisfaction with progress, the Secretary of State has decided to appoint a new chairman soon. It must assemble a new committee with a maximum of five members that can accelerate. It is also intended that the new committee will better involve parents in the process, so that they will appeal against the advice less often.

In 2020, the government started repairing the damage suffered by parents who were wrongly accused of fraud and from whom the tax authorities subsequently recovered all childcare allowance received. If, after a first light test, the government recognizes a parent as a benefit recipient, they will receive 30 thousand euros. To date, 27 thousand parents have received this amount.

This is followed by a so-called comprehensive assessment: for each parent, the government determines how much childcare allowance has been wrongly recovered. Parents who have not passed the light test can also sign up for this. The comprehensive assessment has been completed for less than half of the more than 60 thousand parents who registered as victims in total.

After that, parents who think they have suffered more damage can still report to the Actual Damage Commission. Less than 10 percent of the affected parents have done so so far, but that's where the backlogs are greatest.

Collective settlement agreement

To accelerate the process of settling that additional damage, the government announced before the summer that it will investigate an alternative approach to this, in addition to the Actual Damage Commission. To this end, the government will soon begin a trial with the so-called collective settlement agreement, based on a model developed by a number of benefit victims in cooperation with Princess Laurentien and a number of insurers.

Here, parents first fill out an extensive questionnaire. Standard amounts have been set for things that have happened to them (such as losing a job). For example, based on a parent's story, an amount of damage is determined. If the parent agrees, a settlement agreement can be signed. In addition to the speed, the advantage for parents is that they have to provide fewer evidence of causality.