Government administration and statistics issues

Adam Reuterskiöld (M)

Madam Speaker! I would first like to move for the approval of the committee's proposal. Since it is the first time I am standing in the speaker's chair, I do not want to forget this important part.

There are very many important parts addressed in this report, and it concerns above all the scope of the state and its efficiency. The state has a responsibility when tax is levied on the country's citizens – partly not to levy more than necessary, and partly to ensure that the money is used as efficiently as possible. The state should constantly strive to maximize marginal utility.

The state's extraction of tax has, for understandable reasons, gone hand in hand with the scope of the activities. The tax burden in relation to GDP increased from 9.7 percent to 42.7 percent between the years 1920 and 2020. The public sector's expansion, particularly during the 60s and 70s, meant that the need for further tax extraction increased.

It is naturally not possible to extract higher and higher taxes. During the last Alliance government, the tax burden actually fell. We can lower the tax burden partly by reducing the costs of activities carried out, and partly by considering the scope. This must, however, be put into relation with what the citizens want the state's commitments to encompass.

It is not only the scope of the state's activities that drives costs, but also what agencies and bodies produce: new laws, rules, and regulations. There are currently 343 agencies, according to Statskontoret. For municipalities and regions, the state is actually the largest cost driver in their operations.

The report covers many important issues, but it also includes issues aimed at micro-management, which is usually not the best or most positive for the operations. It is important that we set goals for operations within the state and do not micro-manage how they are to be implemented. Much of the work with efficiencies is already being done today, and that is the primary reason for the position taken in the report.

In the latest budget, the government states that it wants to streamline the public administration through a further review of the public commitment and an analysis of the agencies' organization. Digitalization is also often a good way to streamline, but it is important not to digitize existing structures and processes but instead consider how one can create new ways to provide benefit for the citizens.

The work to create a new agency, the Payment Authority, is also underway. I am generally not in favor of additional state agencies, but if we want to address welfare crime and incorrect payments, the new agency will be of use and reduce the state's costs and thereby create added value.

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

Adnan Dibrani (S)

Madam Speaker! I want to begin by moving for the approval of our reservation 5, so that I have not forgotten it in such a situation.

Fundamentally, our reservation is about following up on the very high food prices that are currently affecting Swedish households. Already this summer, we gave a mandate to the Konjunkturinstitutet to follow up and review the prices and see if they are right or wrong. Then we all know that we lost the election and that a new government came into power. We have continued to support the new government, or push it forward, in an attempt to make reality the things that we believe are important for the Swedish people to be able to eat food.

Madam Speaker! We have a winter behind us that is unlike anything else and that we have not experienced in decades. Inflation has eaten deep holes in ordinary people's wallets. Families with children are sounding the alarm that it is difficult to make the money last. Schools are sounding the alarm that children eat more after the weekend. The debts at the Enforcement Authority are growing. Just this week, a number of different organizations presented a survey showing that every third single mother has problems making ends meet and providing nutritious food to her children.

Inflation and the recession hit Swedish families with children, pensioners, and those who already lived on the margins directly and very hard. We believe that for everyone – or at least for most of us – it is completely obvious that we are in a new economic reality. For us Social Democrats, it is clear that something must be done. The measures that have been taken so far are not enough.

We Social Democrats demanded that the government should bring the food giants together. We demanded that the authorities should be given tools to review price developments, and we demanded that the government should provide an update on housing allowances for families with children. Now it has been six months since the election. Inflation is at record-high levels. We are on the brink of a recession. The Swedish people deserve better. Now the government has met our demand to bring the food giants together and give the authorities a mandate to review food prices. But it is not enough.

Now we are directing a new demand and propose that the government immediately establishes a price commission. The starting point is that we have an inflation that in February stood at 12 percent - an increase since January. We see that it is increasing despite somewhat lower electricity prices, and we see clearly that it is due to the fact that we have too high food prices, and that affects inflation very much. In fact, the sharply increased food prices are increasing more than in over 70 years. They have increased previously as well, but not at this speed. This creates enormous problems for the Swedish households.

The absolute most important thing - and there is a broad consensus on this in politics - is to try to push down inflation as much as possible. But it is equally urgent to alleviate the effects of inflation. That is why we already in the autumn submitted proposals for a temporarily increased child allowance during the winter months, proposals for an electricity bill emergency fund, and a number of other proposals - because we saw that this cost crisis would hit Swedish families hard.

Madam Speaker! The government has so far chosen to do almost nothing, and when they have finally acted, it has been far too late. However, not everything is wrong. It was good that the government could announce that the temporary housing supplement for families with children will remain for the rest of the year. That is exactly what we Social Democrats intended when we introduced it and hoped that the government would continue to do.

Had the government shown leadership and actually managed the situation with food prices, this discussion with the food chains would have started much earlier. It has happened all around Europe, for example France, and it has actually yielded results.

We hope that the Minister for Finance will now once again listen to us, because we usually have the good proposals. It was perhaps not so humbly said, but until now, one has always come two or three weeks later and really listened to them.

In this price commission, it is also important to ensure that not only the entire food chain is included but also the pension organizations and the student organizations, because they often know what the prices look like.

Madam Speaker! It is the economy of ordinary people that is affected. The groups who are already doing what they can and who are struggling to make ends meet are hit hardest. In that case, politics has a responsibility to act. It is about the cohesion in our country, about respect and justice, and about taking collective responsibility in a very tough situation for many at home.

(Applause)

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

Ali Esbati (V)

Madam Speaker! It was pleasing to hear Adnan Dibrani present several of the Left Party's proposals as S-proposals. It is an order that we would like to continue with also in the future!

I move for approval of the Left Party's reservation 3. It is a reservation that concerns two issues aimed at the working conditions for employees.

A problem we have in the Swedish labor market more generally is what consequences the spread of staffing companies has. On an overall level, it concerns just over 200,000 people who are in the sector, around 100,000 jobs. Certain groups are overrepresented, and it is more often young men without formal education and foreign-born individuals. We know, among other things, through statistics from the Swedish Work Environment Authority that hired personnel significantly more often work with risky tasks and also more often suffer work-related accidents than other employees.

But it is not only the agency workers who are affected by agency employment. The division between hired and employed staff at the same workplace hinders and impairs the possibilities to conduct effective trade union activities. Agency employment can also be used to erode the protection against dismissal in the Employment Protection Act, through solutions where dismissals are followed by replacement with hired personnel.

Vänsterpartiet considers it important that employers primarily ensure they have sufficient staffing to be able to handle variations in the production pace and cover for illnesses and leaves of absence. There are also opportunities to manage, for example, seasonal variations or to hire substitutes for specific situations.

What we have instead seen at the system level is that the introduction of general fixed-term employment and the entry of staffing companies into the labor market has contributed to a development in the opposite direction. To an ever greater extent, it is about covering permanent staffing needs with hired personnel. It undermines the Swedish model and the position of the collective of employees.

Vänsterpartiet has a number of proposals in this area to strengthen workers' positions and improve working conditions and the work environment. They appear in several other reports and debates here in the Riksdag, but today it is more specifically about the state's use of staffing agencies.

There are several problems with the state using outsourcing at all. The union ST, which organizes state employees, has, for example, on several occasions noted that over time a change has occurred regarding the content of the outsourced work tasks.

Staff hired from staffing agencies are no longer used solely within the support functions of authorities, such as reception, switchboard and administration, but also for work in the core activities of authorities, that is, the exercise of authority. This is something that can partly risk the public's opportunities for insight, control and accountability, and partly have negative consequences for the quality of the processing.

In the Swedish administrative model, this is problematic. The outsourcing can also involve large consultancy costs, where the resources would have been better used to do the work internally and then also to build up and preserve the competence within the sphere of the state administration.

Vänsterpartiet therefore considers that the state's use of staffing agencies should be phased out. This is partly about the state being a good employer, and partly about safeguarding the exercise of public authority. A first step is to clarify this in the state agencies' employer policy.

It is desirable that the state acts as a positive role model in fundamental employer issues. If the state leads by example and ensures that problematic staffing solutions are avoided in its own personnel supply, it can hopefully spread to other parts of the labor market. It is such an explicit change in the state's employer policy that we have demanded from the Left Party's side.

I will also briefly mention the other proposal that is embedded in our reservation.

Unemployment among persons with disabilities is higher than among the population as a whole. Since 2016, the Government has invested in creating internship placements at various agencies for persons with disabilities. Around 500 people have had internships at over 80 agencies. It is a pleasing result, even though one can easily imagine that this can grow.

The government cannot be satisfied with the current situation. In order for people not to risk only getting one opportunity for internship, the next step must be taken. The government should therefore appoint an inquiry that evaluates the already existing initiative on internship placements and which aims to get more agencies to accept job seekers with disabilities and, in the long run, offer them employment.

The deliberation was hereby concluded.

(Decisions were made under § 23.)

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