(cont. from § 6) Municipal affairs (cont. FiU26)
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
Vänsterpartiet (V) argues that Sweden is characterized by growing regional differences where the countryside and the suburbs are being left behind. V wants an overall strategy for sustainable growth, more evenly distributed employment, and that the state takes responsibility for basic public services 1. V criticizes deregulation, the profit interest in welfare, and tax cuts that increase the gaps 1. SD argues that the municipal equalization system should support rural municipalities and criticizes that large city municipalities such as Malmö take large parts of these funds 2 3. SD believes that migration policy has created gaps and exclusion 2 3. V argues instead that a lack of integration policy and racism prevent people from entering the labor market 4 5. V demands more general state grants to all municipalities 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Ilona Szatmári Waldau (V)
Madam Speaker! Sweden is characterized by large and growing regional differences. The inequality is visible on the maps, on the map of Sweden and on the city maps. The money is in the center, in the large cities and in the city centers. At the same time, the countryside, the industrial towns and the suburbs are left behind.
Of the ten municipalities with the highest median income in Sweden, seven are in Stockholm County, and of the ten with the lowest median income, only two are located in metropolitan areas. Even within our major cities, there are gigantic gaps. Between the terminal stations of the Stockholm metro, there are several years' difference in average life expectancy. For example, a highly educated man in Danderyd lives on average 18 years longer than a lowly educated man in Vårby.
Vänsterpartiet wants everyone to have both the right and the opportunity to live where they wish. For that, an overall strategy is needed that is based on long-term and sustainable growth, higher and more evenly distributed employment, and a clear responsibility for the state to ensure that basic social services exist throughout the country.
Access to public services in the form of good healthcare, schools, and childcare and elderly care is crucial. But instead, we have seen how deregulation and the sell-off of public activities, in combination with an over-reliance on market solutions, have moved jobs away from rural areas and suburbs.
The reduction of the safety net systems has decreased individual incomes and municipal tax revenues as well as increased the municipalities' expenditures for social assistance, primarily in the country's poorest municipalities.
Extensive state tax cuts have benefited the residents in the country's wealthiest municipalities and increased the inequalities even further. The appointed investigation on the cost and equalization systems must return with a proposal for a larger redistribution; anything else would be a failure for the investigation.
For many years, the welfare system has been underfunded, and it is still underfunded and will be even more so next year. Vänsterpartiet has presented several proposals to strengthen the municipalities and regions during recent years.
In the face of the crises resulting from pandemics, wars, and economic downturns, our municipalities and regions must be equipped with a functioning school system and elderly care, and good and safe healthcare. This requires more resources, not more tax cuts or sell-offs.
The alarm reports about cuts in schools that have now come from various municipalities are only the beginning. Next year, municipalities and regions are expected to run a deficit of 24 billion, despite the cuts they are making this year to get into balance. Cuts are being made because the government and its coalition partner do not provide the municipalities with sufficient state grants.
Madam Speaker! The profit motive distorts the way welfare functions. Something is wrong when municipal officials are forced to spy on home care staff because there are indications of cheating, that visits are registered without anyone being there or are there for much shorter periods than what is registered.
Something is wrong when several companies within home care are excluded from choice systems due to fraud. Something is also wrong when municipal representatives can see that the profits from the choice fraud end up in the pockets of criminal gangs.
In the midst of all this cheating, there are elderly people who are neglected. The reports of neglect are many, both due to cheating and due to understaffing. The staff at residential homes and in home care often lack training, and many are hired on a need basis. They do as well as they can, but they do not always have the conditions to do a good job, not least because they are too few.
Our elderly deserve good care and good housing, not deficient care because companies must generate profit or because politicians prioritize tax cuts or free establishment rights for companies even if they are questionable.
When the pursuit of profit governs, those patients who are most profitable to treat are prioritized instead of those who truly need care the most. Health centers and medical clinics are most often established in areas where people are well-off and relatively healthy. This means that the healthcare funds go there and are insufficient for care in areas where people have lower incomes and where ill health is higher.
In a similar way, for-profit schools often prioritize attracting students from education-oriented homes or enticing students with promises and advertising that do not correspond to the quality of the teaching. Joyful grades that do not correspond to the students' knowledge is one of the effects of this. Education that does not meet the standard is another.
The pursuit of profit has consequences, and it is the students in both the profit-driven and the municipal school that lose. It is no coincidence that the Swedish school results have declined since the free school system was introduced.
A transfer of our common ownership to private ownership benefits neither the municipal residents, equality, gender equality nor welfare, regardless of whether we are talking about school, healthcare or care. Profits simply do not belong in welfare.
Madam Speaker! I hereby move for the approval of the joint reservation 5 of the Left Party, the Social Democrats, and the Green Party.
Mattias Eriksson Falk (SD)
Madam Speaker! When I listen to the member from Vänsterpartiet, I hear that she often speaks of gaps and that things have become worse in Sweden. I took up in my speech and in previous exchanges of remarks the importance of the municipal equalization system and the basic principle that was included with it.
It is about supporting, above all, rural and sparsely populated municipalities so that they get equal conditions to be able to provide welfare despite, for example, geographical distances that make it difficult to plan the operations and which also make them more expensive.
I also mentioned Malmö as a cautionary example of when politics creates poorer conditions and unsustainable situations. In Malmö today, for example, 17.7 percent of the population is dependent on benefits, that is, benefit-supported, while the Swedish average is 11.9 percent. This is despite the fact that Malmö has the geographical conditions with the infrastructure and the proximity to the Copenhagen region to create as good opportunities as possible for tax revenues, a functioning welfare, and a structure in its organizational operations within the municipal sector to make it function as well as possible.
Malmö is not a small municipality. It is a large municipality that has the prerequisites. Despite that, Malmö's share eats up quite a lot of the municipal equalization system. It is 6.3 billion, most in Sweden, that Malmö receives, and it is other municipalities that pay for it.
The Sweden Democrats' view is that it is the migration policy that has contributed to the major problems we have in, for example, Malmö today and that has created much of the divide. Is it also the Left Party's view that the divide in, for example, Malmö is due to the conducted migration policy and that it is this which has created the inequality we see today?
Ilona Szatmári Waldau (V)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Mattias Eriksson Falk, for the questions!
I can state that the municipality that is hit hardest in Sweden is Dorotea, which has the highest municipal tax in Sweden - more than 6 kronor more than the lowest municipal tax. It is for those municipalities that we need to change the system, so that the countryside and all of Sweden can live.
I do not intend to engage in any debate here that might be better suited for the Malmö municipal council than for the Riksdag.
There are flaws in the Swedish migration policy, but not in the direction that the Sverigedemokraterna want it to go. It is about us closing the borders to people who truly have a need for protection.
What I can see, however, is that the conducted integration policy in Sweden has fallen short. We have a racism that makes it harder for people who have similar education to Swedes but come from another country to get work. It is not about their competence, but about how Sweden views immigrants.
It has been different over the years. My father has told me about how people during a period when he was looking for a job said: You break - in what language? But how exciting! You have good competence; how exciting that you want to come and work with us, you who have experience from Hungary. You can speak several languages, very good!
Then suddenly, Sweden, the people, and the employers shifted. Then he spoke better Swedish. Then it was a fact that he had reasons why he did not get a job, despite having lived the greater part of his life in Sweden.
So it was never about my father's competence. It was about where he came from.
Mattias Eriksson Falk (SD)
Madam Speaker! The Member mentioned Dorotea municipality as an example of a municipality affected by the difficulties that exist within the municipal sector. I agree. As I mentioned, the basis for the municipal financial equalization system was precisely to help, above all, rural and sparsely populated municipalities by leveling out the differences that exist. It was needed, and on that, we agree.
Here you need to set it against, for example, Malmö, which becomes a telling example of a large city municipality that actually has all the prerequisites to fare better than, for example, Dorotea municipality, but which despite this does not, but instead consumes more and more money from the municipal financial equalization system - closer to 6.3 billion during this year.
The answer to this we have heard from the Socialdemokraterna and now also the Vänsterpartiet is review, review, redistribute, redistribute - this instead of getting to the bottom of the problem that may not be in the system but in how it is utilized and how the money is distributed. A municipality like Malmö, or for that matter Gothenburg, needs to get to the bottom of the problems one has and that the migration policy has led to, such as exclusion and the growing problem that more and more people need to receive financial assistance because they do not get into work.
Then I must still ask the member: Does the Left Party not agree that it is problematic that a large city municipality, which has all the prerequisites to have a better economic position, consumes more and more of the support that could have gone to, for example, Dorotea municipality or some other Norrland municipality that has poorer economic prerequisites to manage its welfare?
Ilona Szatmári Waldau (V)
Madam Speaker! Migration policy has not led to exclusion. On the other hand, a lack of integration policy has led to people having difficulty entering the labor market. One does not receive enough support to, for example, acquire the language. We have also had a policy that means people are not allowed to settle wherever they want. This may possibly have led to the differences we see in society.
But I want to come back to this: A very contributing cause is that regardless of people's competence, it is their origin, which country they come from, that determines how great chances they have to get work.
I have myself been affected by racism. I know that I have not received jobs I applied for because I had a name that was not Swedish. I can also state that I am standing and debating with a person who does not even try to pronounce my name but calls me "ledamoten" (the member). We do that sometimes, but I wonder if it is not about the difficulty of even daring to try my name.
We live in a country where all people should have opportunities. For all people to have opportunities, we must also have a welfare that we can rely on. We have just heard Mattias Eriksson Falk in a previous post standing and talking about how much general support the municipalities receive, when we know that it is precisely the opposite. SKR talks about that only targeted investments will come from the government and that these shall go to several different things.
We need more general state grants to our municipalities - to Malmö, to Dorotea and to all other municipalities - so that they can invest in welfare and ensure that we get a good integration and that all people in Sweden get a job and a dignified life. It is something that the Sverigedemokraterna want to deny them.
The deliberation was hereby concluded.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.