Crime, deliberate cheating and irregularities linked to personal assistance are completely reprehensible and should of course be prosecuted. It can not be described as anything other than theft from the right holders who are entitled to support and theft from all taxpayers. That is where the Liberals agree with the Swedish Social Insurance Agency’s director general Nils Öberg, but that is also where our agreement ends.
According to us in the Liberals, the responsibility for some of all the shortcomings that Nils Öberg describes falls back on the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, and above all on the government, which has not governed this authority well enough to ensure people’s statutory rights.
The Liberals believe that on the one hand, efforts are needed against crime and cheating, on the other hand, efforts are needed against the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. It is not reasonable for one and the same authority to be responsible for examining the application, decision, payment, withdrawal, judgment of individuals, recovery and criminal injunction. We want to see a division of assignments.
Assistance issues are all too often treated as a special interest for a small group. Nothing could be more wrong.
The Liberals’ demand is that an LSS inspection be introduced, similar to the Swedish Schools Inspectorate. It’s about people’s opportunities to live their lives. It’s about human rights and the rule of law, it’s about stopping the theft of our valuable tax money.
Assistance issues are all too often treated as a special interest for a small group. Nothing could be more wrong. The right to assistance is important for all of us, from those children who are born in need of assistance from their first day, to those who need assistance later in life after the accident, to all the relatives who are affected.
The LSS inspection must first take advantage of the rights of the individual contributor vis-à-vis the authorities. Secondly, the inspectorate must ensure that criminals are prosecuted and crimes prosecuted, ie be a guarantee that the billion kronor in recoveries that Öberg talks about will not be paid out from the outset.
In the spring, the government presented its bill “Faster and easier enforcement of government decisions”. Behind the dry headline are proposals for changes in the Enforcement Code. If the government’s proposal goes through, it means that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency is given the opportunity to launch recoveries without first having a final judgment that establishes that the compensation has actually been paid incorrectly. The procedure would put efficiency before the right of the individual.
We question whether it is not the controls that have broken down. Well-functioning controls are required to prevent abuse. If abuse then occurs, as we have seen it does, controls must be tightened so that crime comes to an end.