(cont.) Response to interpellation 2022/23:277 on social dumping between municipalities
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD considers social dumping to be an unsolidary behavior 1 which partly stems from a conflict between housing supply and jobs, where newcomers are the largest group affected 1. KD argues that reduced migration affects the problem positively 1 2 and that municipalities can resolve this among themselves 3. KD wants to review municipal establishment housing over three years 2 and argues that the government is phasing out the investment support for rental apartments 2. S considers social dumping to be immoral, undignified, and about reducing own costs at the expense of the individual 4 5. S wants to see action against this through regulation and that an authority takes responsibility.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Statsrådet Erik Slottner (KD)
Mr. Speaker! I can start by saying, as I said in February, that I did not mean to be sarcastic when I said that this was recently debated here in the chamber. The interpellants are welcome to return with more interpellations – I see it as a promise and not a threat. I only meant that we had a debate on this a few weeks ago and that my statements will not be much different than they were six, seven, or possibly eight weeks ago.
I said then, just as I say now: I do not like social dumping. I do not like the phenomenon of social dumping. I think that it is a behavior that, if done deliberately and systematically, is actually bad and unsolidary towards municipal colleagues around the country.
Then everything is not black or white. There is an inherent conflict that partly gives rise to this system - where it is difficult to get a job, it is often easy to get housing, but where it is easy to get housing, it is difficult to get a job. The supply of housing is not matched and is not met by the supply of jobs and vice versa. It is an inherent conflict. Sometimes it is difficult to know what is social dumping and what is a result of the fact that there actually is a lack of housing in a municipality and that one is moved to another municipality. It is not entirely easy to know. But I do not like this, and I am happy to work against social dumping.
Then we discussed who is covered by social dumping, or who constitutes the majority. The picture I received when I met the investigator, which I did after the investigation was closed, is that newcomers are by far the largest group. Other groups also occur within social services, people with an addiction for example, but the vast majority are newcomers. Not least, quota refugees, she said, were a fairly large majority of those it concerned. In that case, it naturally matters that the migration policy has now been restructured so that the number of refugees, both asylum seekers and quota refugees, will decrease significantly in the future. This will hopefully and probably have an impact on the phenomenon of social dumping. That is what I am quite convinced of.
Then there was the tax equalization – it was stated in several posts that it does not compensate for this. No, and that is precisely why the investigation into the tax equalization, among other things, has directives to review the socioeconomic factors, whether they are equal in the tax equalization system and whether they are sufficiently strong. I think it is good that this is being investigated. There, for example, imbalances in this system could be detected and corrected if we want them to be.
Then there was a question concerning the fact that I should have thought that one can work at Foodora and in elderly care remotely - so that is naturally not the case. Now I do not think that newcomers need to be relegated solely to Foodora and elderly care, but I also see that there are many well-educated people who come here, not least from war-torn Syria, with quite long educations in their luggage. Some of them could work remotely. The context was that I said that we do not have municipal detention. After the establishment period is over, one is free to move wherever one wants. I believe that if one wants to move somewhere where there are plenty of housing, remote work can be a way that facilitates things for those who have professions where one can work remotely. This naturally does not apply to everyone.
I had a bit more to say, but I get four more minutes after this post, so I will return then. My opponents are, after all, slightly more in number than I am.
Denis Begic (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Minister! It is a bit difficult when one has to resume the debate in this way after having to interrupt it in the middle of the proceedings for a group meeting. One loses a bit of momentum.
I understand that the Minister has received the information from the investigator that it primarily concerned newly arrived people. But new patterns are being seen right now, and that is why I have requested this interpellation debate. I want to urge the Minister to look at this question again and see what it is that is happening.
I am highly critical when municipalities actively contribute to individuals in need of social interventions being moved between municipalities. It is both immoral and undignified that they are allowed to continue with this. By encouraging, or even forcing, socially vulnerable people to settle in another municipality, these municipalities divest themselves of their own responsibility to take care of their citizens. Instead of offering social interventions and help in their own municipality, they move the problems to completely different municipalities. This, in turn, contributes to these individuals ending up in an even more vulnerable situation.
This action is directly harmful to the municipalities that are forced to receive these people. The vulnerable people who settle in these municipalities usually burden their social services. This can lead to great strain. It also harms the integration between the people who are already settled there and the people who have moved into the community.
In some cases, the municipalities have actually succeeded in getting people to educate themselves. They are assistant nurses, and they get jobs. What happens then – which is more the rule than the exception – is that they move back to the municipalities from which they were moved. It is therefore not just that the municipalities take care of those who involve the greatest costs, but they also lose these people when it is time to give them jobs. This is the municipality that perhaps for six or seven years has tried to make different interventions so that these people can get an education and end up in inclusion instead of in exclusion.
Mr. Speaker! Today, there are also companies in the construction industry that have systematized this. They buy houses and offer people with social needs to move there. The rents then end up at 13,000 instead of 3,000. When the municipalities then say no to these rents, the people are evicted, and so the carousel starts again. Then the municipality is forced to find housing, and, as my colleague Ola Möller says, perhaps that municipality ensures that the housing instead ends up in the next municipality.
This is not worthy of the municipalities, Sweden, or the people who end up in social exclusion. The problem is that lately, people have talked about newcomers, quota refugees, and so on. But these are actually people who come with children. They may have had substance abuse problems or ended up on the wrong side of life. They may have three or four children with them, and then the school is also exposed to this.
For me, this is an absurdity that something needs to be done about. I truly hope that the Minister takes this most seriously, because we will probably have more debates about this in the future.
Ola Möller (S)
Mr. Speaker! What I do not understand is how the Minister on November 17 could think that the investigation would come with valuable additions and that it was important, because on December 22 the issue is suddenly off the table, and this without, for example, something such as municipal housing subsidies having been investigated. That is one way one could solve this. Had the municipalities with a strong labor market and housing shortage wanted to handle it, they could have paid housing subsidies. But that is not what it is about. It is about that these municipalities do not want these people in their municipality. And so they contribute to reinforced segregation by sending them to municipalities where there are already challenges with the labor market and with housing of poorer quality. So the circus is underway. But this is what the Minister does not want answers to, and therefore the investigation is shut down.
I do not know the Minister, so I will not doubt his intentions. The Minister may think that this is an important issue. But his colleagues in the government do not, they have overridden the Minister and scrapped his investigation.
No matter how you twist and turn it, the minister is obliged to answer the question: What should the minister do to stop this problem? It is a gigantic problem. One solution could be to build more housing, but there the minister has also been overridden by the fact that the investment support has been scrapped. It is 8 billion that is disappearing where housing could be built, including in municipalities that could handle this if they have municipal housing companies. But these are the answers the minister does not want to have, because the investigation has been laid down.
Answer the question! Why does the Minister deliberately conduct a policy that fuels segregation?
Sofie Eriksson (S)
Mr. Speaker! The Minister says that it is a bad and non-solidary behavior that the dumping municipalities engage in. I truly agree with that statement, but the inherent conflict that the Minister raises is not God-given. Something can be done about the problems. Municipalities with a housing shortage can do something about it, and municipalities that engage in social dumping can be forced to stop. But we have a right-wing government that does not want to do anything about this, but instead has scrapped the investigation that could have provided important answers on how one could proceed.
The Minister seems to believe that the problems will solve themselves because we have fewer asylum seekers, but we know that it is not the only group. The number of vulnerable people does not directly appear to be decreasing, rather the opposite in this difficult economic situation. Housing construction is decreasing, and the investment support has been scrapped. There are therefore rather great risks that the problem will escalate.
I will give the Minister a new chance to answer my question. Wealthy municipalities around our major cities dump their socially vulnerable people on us in Ludvika municipality, in Blötberget and in Fredriksberg. Does Erik Slottner agree with our Prime Minister that these municipalities can be called pioneers against subsidy dependency, when what they are actually doing is exporting their problems? Does Erik Slottner agree with the Prime Minister's statement? What does he say to the people in Blötberget and in Fredriksberg regarding how the problems should be solved?
Eva Lindh (S)
Mr. Speaker! It is called social dumping when a municipality gets a person who, for example, receives financial assistance to move to another municipality without the person themselves having expressed a desire to move. On paper, housing shortages or other reasons can be cited, but in reality, it is about trying to reduce the municipality's own costs at the expense of the individual.
The social services state that interventions shall be based on the individual's needs and life situation, but decisions regarding interventions shall not be made over the head of the individual. For example, a municipality may not force persons who need assistance to change their place of residence, as occurs in cases of social dumping.
Those who are relocated are furthermore given poorer conditions because many of the municipalities they are moved to have a worse labor market and fewer opportunities for jobs and thus also poorer opportunities for them to get their lives in order, which I hope we all want them to get.
The government has made a choice and considers that the investigation into social dumping is not a priority. I am sure that the people who are subjected to this do not agree, but they face even tougher challenges and conditions with this government than with the previous one.
I want to return to the investigation on the equalization system. In addition to the fact that the entire system is to be reviewed over two years, even if one does not always have two years at one's disposal, the Minister for Civil Affairs considers that we must also resolve this issue of social dumping now. We have not received any additional directives or anything else, and I still seriously wonder how the Minister for Civil Affairs believes this issue should be resolved.
We want to counter social dumping. It must come to an end now.
Statsrådet Erik Slottner (KD)
Mr. Speaker! In the exchanges of remarks, it sometimes sounds a bit as if one has not really listened to what I have said, not to all of it at least.
I think it is a problem with social dumping. It sounds in the debaters' exchanges of remarks as if I am not doing it, but I think that social dumping is a problem and an unsolidary behavior towards municipal colleagues. But sometimes I nuance the issue a bit. Sometimes it is not black or white. It is something that can arise for different reasons - it is this that I try to nuance. But I think that it is a problem.
I visit all county administrative boards and the county governors and the employees there. When I visit them, I request to meet municipal representatives in the county concerned to have an exchange with the municipalities all around Sweden, which is very good. Then I sometimes bring up this issue, but there are few municipalities that have taken it up on their own.
The latest information that there is a trend shift now, from primarily concerning newly arrived people to concerning native Swedes with social problems, has actually not reached me. If this has been verified in a document, a conversation, or an interview somewhere, I will gladly receive it, because it is not information that has reached me or my officials at the Ministry of Finance.
The investigation into social dumping went quite far, and I received a lot of valuable information when I met the investigator and her secretariat. My staff and I have received it and are analyzing it to see if there is anything we can move forward with. However, the proposals did not fall under my area of responsibility but under other departments. That is perhaps a bit of the problem with social dumping, that the measures needed many times do not fall under the Ministry of Finance's area of responsibility but under other departments.
In the Tidö Agreement, it is said that one wants to review if municipal establishment housing can be held for three years in order to achieve greater national equality. I think that would be very welcome. In that way, we would get the municipalities to interpret the Settlement Act more similarly across the country, which would be good. One could extend the time from two years, which is many municipalities' interpretation of the law, to three years.
One must still be quite naive if one does not see any connection between the very high migration we have had to Sweden and the phenomenon of social dumping. We see that migration to Sweden is slowing down significantly and will continue to be quite low ahead, and I am convinced that this will have the consequence that social dumping decreases in Sweden.
Then I cannot help but mention the investment support for rental apartments, which has been discussed here. Not a single krona more than the government is putting the Socialdemokraterna on this in their shadow budget. The government is phasing out the investment support. Those who have been granted it will receive it in 2022, but there will be no new money in 2023. There are also no such funds in the Socialdemokraterna's budget, but the criticism indicates that there are other funds.
Regarding the quotes from Ulf Kristersson, I do not intend to stand here and review my fellow ministers' statements. I took a quick look at what interview it was about, because I did not recognize the quote. Talk about distorting an interview from a minister! The Prime Minister did not speak at all about social dumping being a way to be a pioneer regarding benefit dependency. It was interpreted very maliciously by Social Democratic counter-debaters, but I do not intend to engage in that type of malicious rhetoric.
Denis Begic (S)
Mr. Speaker! I would like to thank you for the debate. We will probably have reason to return.
It is clear that there are many words that can be used. But we want to see action in this matter. It is serious, and it is here.
My intention is to ensure that this immoral act is highlighted in this chamber. That is why I have posed this question. I can already tell the Minister that we will probably see each other again, perhaps not within eight weeks but perhaps within twelve weeks, and discuss approximately the same issues. I must find out more regarding what the Minister has said here today.
For me, it is about the municipalities not taking responsibility for their citizens. The situation that many municipalities in rural areas are experiencing is unsustainable. Today, the Minister has heard some examples from me and my colleagues. And I truly hope that the Minister takes these examples to heart and tries to do something about this and move from words to action.
I also want to take this opportunity to send along a few things that the municipalities I have met with have raised. The three points they have raised are: Set requirements and regulate so that the municipalities take care of their citizens in the long term! Limit other municipalities' ability to socially dump people without motive! And let an authority take responsibility! It is these three things that the municipalities I have met with have sent along – their social services managers, their municipal councilors, and their municipal managers.
I would like to thank the Minister and my colleagues here again for the debate.
Statsrådet Erik Slottner (KD)
Mr. Speaker! I also want to thank you for the debate and thank the interpellor for the interpellation.
It feels almost a little threatening when the interpellor narrows his eyes at me and says that we will see each other again. But I do not see it as a threat. I like to stand here and debate different proposals with the opposition.
As I have said before, I think that social dumping is a problem. I will gladly return with proposals on how we can reduce the risks of social dumping. But as I said in my previous post, several of these measures will not fall under my responsibility as minister. The proposals coming from some municipalities and from the investigator concern areas other than those of the Ministry of Finance.
I also want to advocate for the municipalities also contacting each other. There is a good example of a municipality that was subjected to social dumping. They picked up the phone and called the municipality that had done this. Then the social dumping ceased. That was a story from one municipality. I still think that one must highlight the examples that exist across the country which show that the municipalities can resolve this among themselves. That is, of course, the very best.
I also want to respond to what Eva Lindh raised earlier. One does not always have time to respond to everything in four minutes when there are so many opposing debaters.
Until some additional directives are in various committees and investigations, the directives that exist apply. If the Tax Equalization Committee comes with additional directives, they will do so. But until additional directives, the directives that now exist apply.
Since we last debated this about six weeks ago, there have been no new initiatives from the government on this issue. But I believe that the Social Democrats, as a party accustomed to being in government, also know that government processes take their time. It is a difference from when one was a municipal politician, when it actually went a bit faster.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.