Rutte continues to ask benefit parents for patience, despite frustration in Kamer | Politics

May 23, 2023 at 10:55 pm

Prime Minister Mark Rutte continues to ask the parents who have been duped by the benefits scandal for patience. He says he shares the frustration about the difficult compensation scheme, but cannot promise that it will go any faster. “Then I deceive people.”

Rutte would prefer to help all benefit parents today. “There is no discussion about that,” says the prime minister on Tuesday evening during a debate about the handling of the benefits scandal.

Rutte has been warning for years that the handling of the files cannot be done any faster. “If you accelerate with the best of intentions, it turns out that things unexpectedly get stuck,” he said on Tuesday.

In addition, he pointed out that, in the eyes of the cabinet, an acceleration has already been made. Initially, the files of the affected parents would be completed in 2027.

It has now been two and a half years since the devastating report Unknown Injustice was published. The suffering suffered by victims at the hands of the Tax and Customs Administration became so painfully clear that the cabinet resigned.

‘I don’t know what to ask anymore’

Some opposition parties believe that too little has happened since then. In it, SP, DENK, BBB, non-partisan MP Pieter Omtzigt, PvdA and GroenLinks mainly aimed their arrows at Rutte.

“The promise was that the settlement would be completed within a year,” said SP Member of Parliament Renske Leijten. “The answer is now two to three years.” Leijten found Rutte’s answers indifferent.

Visitors also expressed their dissatisfaction in the public gallery. “We want recovery”, they shouted.

“I don’t know what to ask anymore,” Omtzigt said at one point in a despondent tone. After eleven debates on the benefits scandal, the MP believes that he has not received any answers from the cabinet.

Like Leijten and DENK Member of Parliament Stephan van Baarle, Omtzigt does not believe that Rutte is the best person to handle the benefits scandal.

GroenLinks and PvdA thought differently about that. Three ministers and a cabinet have already resigned because of the benefits scandal. Asking Rutte again to resign makes no sense, the left-wing parties thought.

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