Het gesproken woord geldt.
Ladies and gentlemen,
At this conference we’ve seen many examples of situations where the actions of public authorities undermined the rule of law.
The impact these actions have had on ordinary people almost defies description.
Besides deliberate violations of the rule of law,
there is another way in which government can erode the rule of law and lose sight of ordinary people’s interests.
I’m talking about strict, inflexible policies, like fraud prevention measures. These can have disastrous effects on people’s lives.
I am the Minister for Benefits Redress in the Netherlands,
a democratic country,
governed by the rule of law.
A country that has what appears to be a well-functioning public sector.
But from the word ‘redress’ in my job title, you’ll probably have guessed that something went badly wrong.
Due to systemic failures in my country between 2005 and 2019,
the rights of thousands of people were violated.
As a result, many of those affected suffered financial difficulties, lost their homes and their jobs, and some even got sick.
The government never intended for this to happen, but it did.
Let me take you back in time, to 2017.
I was working at the Tax Administration and I had no political ambitions.
One day a director asked me to examine a file concerning Dutch childcare benefit.
After studying the file, it quickly became clear to me
that the government wasn’t treating people fairly.
If there were signs that a daycare centre may have failed to follow the rules, the parents – the daycare’s clients – were suspected of fraud.
Parents who had received a bit too much benefit
for the full year were suddenly required to pay back
the entire annual amount in one go,
halfway through the year.
The sums were often thousands of euros.
My main objection was that the decision
to terminate benefit halfway through the year
was based on incorrect legal grounds.
This meant that these parents were denied
legal protection.
And it was clear that the government’s actions had landed those parents in real difficulties.
I was faced with a dilemma:
for me, the most logical step, legally speaking, was to write to the parents, apologise for the error and pay them a reasonable amount of compensation.
But I knew that the Tax Administration might not be happy about that.
It was a time when fraud and abuses were under a microscope.
Many politicians viewed benefit recipients with distrust.
A proposal to redress this mistake by paying compensation might not go down well in The Hague, the seat of the Dutch government.
I had to carefully consider what I should write in my memo about my findings.
Should I say what my director wanted to hear in this political climate?
I wasn’t a politician.
I was a jurist. And it was my job to apply the law.
So I decided to choose the law.
And, frankly, to choose me.
After all, what kind of jurist would I be
if I didn’t stand up for the law?
And not only that: as a civil servant I had sworn an oath.
I had promised to serve the public interest.
The interest of society as a whole.
As I sat at my desk pondering these things, I experienced the true meaning of those words.
And although that memo remained in a drawer
for a long time
– which happens a lot with highly complex cases –
that document unexpectedly became part of a process of irreversible change.
Because my memo eventually saw the light of day.
Thanks to two investigative journalists and several members of parliament who had received many reports that something wasn’t right with the childcare benefit system.
They kept on asking questions.
They weren’t satisfied with partial explanations.
And gradually, they built up a large case file.
When this was first made public, the political impact became clear:
Between 2005 and 2019, tens of thousands of parents who’d received too much childcare benefit were forced to pay it back.
Often, they had to pay thousands of euros.
Many people ended up in debt. Some lost their jobs and their homes. And some became ill.
The Netherlands was in shock.
What had gone wrong?
How could this have happened in a country known for its effective government?
How was it possible that we had so badly lost sight of the impact of government actions on ordinary people?
A Parliamentary Committee on Childcare Benefit was established, and I was called to testify.
The committee’s conclusion was clear.
The parents had suffered ‘unprecedented injustice’.
The government set up a major operation
to redress that injustice.
In 2020, a minister was appointed to deal with the failings
in the benefits system.
And when my predecessor stepped down in 2024,
I was asked to take up the post.
Duty called.
The redress operation is made up of three elements:
First:
arranging financial compensation
for the parents and children affected;
Second:
providing support
with psychological and emotional recovery;
And lastly:
restoring public trust in government and in the rule of law.
Because a great deal of damage had been done.
We’ve now reached the final phase of that operation.
For most of the parents, the financial part has now been completed.
My focus is now mainly on those parents who deserve extra compensation, for example because they lost their job or their home.
Our aim is to fully complete the financial redress element by the end of 2027.
And at that point, specialist organisations will assume responsibility
for the emotional and psychological support process.
When the time comes, I will be stepping down from my role as minister, and I won’t be replaced.
Because, if everything goes to plan, the parents will have received the redress and support they deserve for the injustice they suffered.
Which is where it all started for me, of course, almost 10 years ago.
For now, though, there’s still plenty of work to be done.
Perhaps the most fragile element of this is restoring trust.
Because this is about mutual trust…
in the sometimes-fraught relationship between government and people.
It’s also about the rule of law.
Because the rights of citizens were not sufficiently protected.
But above all, of course, it’s about how we treat each other.
Person to person, in our day-to-day interactions.
And it’s about justice.
Especially when it comes to the relationship between government and the people it serves.
When I testified before the Parliamentary Committee I said that the people who implement policy
– those who are in direct contact with citizens –
know better than anyone what is going on.
They know what is working as it should.
But they also know what is going wrong.
They see how laws and rules work in practice.
They see the effects on people. And on people’s lives.
They are in contact with ordinary people.
And so it’s here that there are opportunities to be taken.
One of the lessons that we in the Netherlands
have learned from the childcare benefit scandal is
to make far better use of those opportunities.
This means that the people who make policy and those who implement it need to roll up their sleeves and work together.
Because policy that doesn’t work in practice is just bad policy.
That’s true, not only in the Netherlands, but everywhere.
If our checks and balances don’t work properly,
ordinary people can get stuck in the system.
With disastrous results.
In the Netherlands, it was the childcare benefit scandal.
In the UK, it was for example the Post Office Scandal.
In Australia it was the Robodebt scandal.
And in Norway, they had the NAV scandal.
These are not isolated incidents.
They are the result of insufficient attention being paid to the impact of policy on the lives of ordinary citizens.
If we want to avoid these kinds of scandals in the future,
we need to make our systems more human-centred.
Because there’s a big difference
between implementing the letter of the law
and applying the law fairly.
The law is necessary.
It offers predictability, legal certainty and equal treatment.
Without law there can be no order,
no certainty and no trust.
And yet…
The law is also a snapshot.
It captures what the government considers reasonable at that moment.
In that sense, legislation is a set of standards frozen in time:
A fixed expression of moral choices.
And that is where the problem lies.
Because society changes so fast that the law can’t keep up.
The practical reality is often so complex that we can’t fully capture it in rules.
And people’s lives can’t be reduced to sections and subsections.
That’s why I say that implementing the letter of the law is not the same thing as applying the law fairly.
Applying the law fairly requires more of us.
It requires good judgment.
The ability to recognise when strict application of the rules will produce an outcome that, if we’re honest, we know to be unfair.
In short, it requires humanity.
Fortunately,
we have the four cardinal virtues to guide us:
Prudence, justice, moderation and fortitude.
First:
Prudence – wisdom, essentially – requires us to look further than the letter of the law.
To think about the consequences of a decision in a specific case.
Second:
Justice – the very core of our legal system – requires us to treat people equally in equal circumstances.
When circumstances are not equal, it requires us to carefully assess the differences.
And that calls for a nuanced approach.
Third:
Moderation reminds us that limits must be placed on power. Including the power of the government.
And fourth:
Fortitude – or courage – is perhaps the most challenging of all.
This is the courage to deviate from the norm when applying the rules too strictly would result in injustice.
It requires professionals who are willing to take responsibility, even if doing so creates tensions.
The cardinal virtues are the soul of the law.
They serve as a bridge between written rules
and the lived reality of justice.
In addition to the cardinal virtues,
we also have legal principles
to guide us when legislation falls short.
Principles such as
proportionality, due care, equality and legal certainty.
These help us to correct our course when legislation is
too harsh or too general,
or takes insufficient account of the individual.
In my view, these legal principles, which are laid down in the law, are not optional extras.
They are part of the same set of fixed standards from which the law arises.
But where the law is set in stone,
these principles flow.
They keep the law alive.
In short:
Implementing the law is a task.
Applying it fairly is a responsibility.
And between the two lies the essence of just government.
That’s why government needs to always ask:
‘Are we doing right by the individual citizen?’
Our focus, after all, should be on the big picture:
How does legislation affect ordinary people’s lives?
Only by looking at the big picture can we preserve
the balance between the all-powerful government
and the individual citizen.
We’ve also seen that the more instructions and handbooks
we produce, the less space there is
for individual legal professionals
to use their own judgment.
And the less scope there is
to take account of individual situations.
That’s something else we see in all these scandals.
And yet, the job of ensuring a just society
cannot be left to legal professionals alone.
Just as the rule of law serves our society,
everyone, by which I mean all members of our society,
must contribute to the rule of law.
How?
By remaining alert.
By sounding the alarm if we see something that’s not right.
By listening to people, even when they ask difficult questions.
Because history has taught us that some of them turn out to be canaries in the coal mine.
But we legal professionals do have a special role when it comes to defending the law.
The recent European judgment establishing that judges have a duty to speak out when the rule of law is under pressure should, in my view, apply to all jurists.
Because defending the law is something we must do first and foremost within society.
We need to ask ourselves:
How do we treat each other?
And how does the government treat the public?
How can you remain true to your legal values,
especially when you’re faced with a dilemma?
In that regard I always had great support from my former professor, Alex Brenninkmeijer.
He served as the Netherlands’ National Ombudsman for more than 10 years.
After that he worked at the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg.
He was also a law professor and administrative judge.
But above all, he was a defender of the rights of citizens.
And he championed their rights before the government.
From him I learned that judicial wisdom begins with not looking away.
He always used to say, ‘Make sure that every evening you’re able to look at yourself in the mirror.’
In every professional role I’ve held –
civil servant,
part-time judge at the Netherlands’ highest administrative court, member of parliament and government minister –
that has been my compass.
My unofficial oath of office, you might say.
When Alex Brenninkmeijer turned 70,
and had to retire,
he gave me his robes.
Not long afterwards, he passed away unexpectedly.
Along with my oath of office, these robes represent wisdom to me.
Together they show that legal wisdom always stems from asking yourself one simple question:
Am I doing the right thing?
Thank you.