Reporting of the distribution of funds from the General Inheritance Fund during the 2021 budget year

Christian Carlsson (KD)

Mr. Speaker! The General Inheritance Fund was established by the Riksdag in 1928 and is managed today by the Chancellery. Funds accrue to the fund when there is no relative closer than a cousin who can inherit or any will explaining how the inheritance should be distributed.

Ever since the establishment of the General Inheritance Fund, it has had the purpose of distributing money to socially important and public-benefit initiatives in the association life. Associations and non-profit organizations can apply for support from the fund, and the support shall be used to promote activities of a non-profit character for the benefit of children, young people, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Travel services, personal assistance, Bris helpline, and the Suicide Line are examples of activities that have been started with money from the General Inheritance Fund.

Mr. Speaker! The General Inheritance Fund is of great importance when it comes to supporting children, young people and persons with disabilities, but also when it comes to strengthening Swedish civil society. In the communication being discussed here today, the previous government has provided an account of the management of the General Inheritance Fund and a report on the distribution of support from the fund during 2021. Furthermore, the upcoming direction of support from the General Inheritance Fund and the areas that the previous government has wanted to prioritize are described.

Twelve areas have been identified that should be prioritized in the Inheritance Fund delegation's distribution of funds. Among others, projects have been pointed out that aim to strengthen children's rights, to prevent violence, bullying and harassment, and to promote mental and physical health and strengthened parenting.

These are examples of priorities that we Christian Democrats welcome. Therefore, I move for approval of the committee's proposal.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Ulrika Westerlund (MP)

Mr. Speaker! It was pleasing to hear Christian Carlsson explain the great importance of the inheritance fund. We in Miljöpartiet naturally share that view. It is a very important fund that has existed for a long time and which has contributed to a very large number of projects that civil society has driven within several important areas, as Christian Carlsson mentioned.

We have written a follow-up motion in connection with this report. In that, we simply want to highlight a few more perspectives that could be possible for the General Inheritance Fund to focus on. This includes, among other things, how money should be invested. We want to highlight further opportunities for sustainability perspectives in the guidelines regarding those investments. It also concerns how the projects could be distributed with a few more perspectives.

I will not go into too much detail in this debate. I just want to say that we highlight the importance of perhaps giving the inheritance fund directives regarding that they should review the policy on gas. It may be that these directives were written in a time when we did not think that gas was so problematic. But in light of the war in Ukraine, it should be clear to more and more people that this might not be a reasonable stance. We see many reasons why our gas dependency needs to be phased out. Therefore, Kammarkollegiet should be tasked with raising the level of ambition on this point, and it should be reflected in the policy.

Then we want to highlight the importance of the connection to Agenda 2030. It is already in the inheritance fund's priorities, but we want to emphasize that Agenda 2030 must always be seen in its entirety. Even though Agenda 2030, just like most, that is to say all, jointly adopted documents from the UN do not contain any clear LGBTQI perspective, for example, it states that one can always include all grounds for discrimination. This is also possible to do for the inheritance fund.

In the document, some specific goals have been accounted for where some more connections to Agenda 2030 are highlighted, but we think it is possible to do so in more places.

Finally, I want to say something about the importance of an intersectional perspective. It relates somewhat to the thinking with Agenda 2030. It has become increasingly so in the inheritance fund's projects, which is also visible in the communication, that one looks more at opportunities to do projects that can be relevant for many target groups. Now, the target group of the elderly has been explicitly included, which we think is positive. But there is an opportunity to do projects that target more target groups within the framework of the prioritized groups that exist. We think that is important.

With this, I move for approval of the reservation contained in the report.

The deliberation was hereby concluded.

(Decisions were made under § 19.)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)