Response to interpellation 2023/24:132 on background checks of personnel within the public sector
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns background checks of personnel within the public sector to counter organized crime. M believes that criminals infiltrate public activities 1 2 and wants to investigate expanded possibilities for register checks for municipalities and state agencies 1 2. M wants the investigation to focus on the municipalities' possibilities to quickly be able to meet the situation in Södertälje 2, and that it should have an international perspective 3. M argues that the crime-preventive interest justifies a shift in position compared to privacy considerations 3 4. SD believes there is a serious deficiency as there is a lack of general rules for broad background checks 5 and advocates for a general provision for all public activities 5. SD wants to examine information beyond the criminal record 5 and suggests that Sweden study the British DBS system 6. SD argues that a smooth system with strong authority support is needed for effective checks 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Ludvig Aspling has asked me which, if any, legislative changes I consider necessary regarding background checks of personnel within the public sector.
Let me begin by stating that organized crime is a threat to the system. We have seen several examples of how criminals infiltrate or exert pressure on the judiciary, other public activities, and political parties. It is extremely serious. Every organization must become aware of and prepare for that risk.
It has recently been particularly noted that there is a great need to be able to perform background checks to a greater extent than today, among others at municipalities and state agencies. This can, among other things, involve the possibility of requesting an extract from a criminal record to be able to detect if a job seeker is involved in serious crime.
For those who conduct activities that are of importance for Sweden's security, that is, the most protected activities in society, there is an obligation to security-vet the personnel.
State authorities and municipalities have, in some cases, the possibility to check the criminal records register before hiring to see if a person has been convicted of certain crimes. Given the intrusion into an individual's private life that such a register check entails, the possibilities to perform such checks are limited.
It is at the same time very important to ensure that the person who is offered employment with a municipality or a state employer does not have connections to such crime that the person poses a risk to the operation. To ensure this, employers need the tools and the knowledge required to be able to carry out thorough and secure recruitment processes.
The Government therefore intends to appoint an inquiry in the near future which shall expeditiously review expanded possibilities for register checks. I do not rule out that it may become relevant to have more measures so that municipalities and state authorities can perform sufficient background checks.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Madam Speaker! I want to begin by thanking the Minister for the cooperation that we have, not least within the framework of the Tidö Agreement. It is important that we can have this type of discussion without it being perceived as if there is a conflict in this issue. I do not believe that is the case fundamentally.
The reason we are here is that JO, the Parliamentary Ombudsmen, has directed criticism at Södertälje Municipality. That criticism is based on Södertälje's continuous security screenings of the personnel employed by the municipality.
Södertälje unfortunately has serious problems with infiltration of the public administration. It concerns criminal clan members who have tried and succeeded in securing employment there for the purpose of committing various types of fraud and other crimes against the municipality's operations.
JO bases its decision on the fact that the municipality's actions are an infringement of the right to personal integrity as established in Chapter 2, Section 6 of the Instrument of Government, where individuals are protected from significant interference with personal integrity if it occurs without consent and involves surveillance or mapping of the individual's personal circumstances.
To carry out such mappings, legal support is required. That is common knowledge. Legal support exists, just as the Minister says, within certain activities. This applies, for example, to the mandatory register check according to the Education Act. Certain authorities that handle sensitive material and sensitive information also have the possibility to carry out this type of check. But today, there is no general rule that allows municipalities and authorities to carry out such checks broadly on all their staff, and that is a rather serious deficiency.
JO's decision is in itself completely correct. What Södertälje municipality argues - that this would still be okay because the municipality has hired a private company to carry out the inspections and does not do it so to speak in-house - is naturally not sufficient, and the decision is completely correct.
What is happening now is unfortunately that Södertälje and several other municipalities that have started working in this way are not completely, but to some extent, defenseless against the criminal clans because one does not have the possibility to carry out this screening, above all of the existing staff.
Madam Speaker! Sweden finds itself in a new situation. The type of criminal, kinship-based networks that plague Sweden today, we have not had historically. It is a partially new problem that requires new solutions.
The Government now announces that it will promptly appoint an inquiry into this. Given how important the issue is, I would like to ask a few supplementary questions.
Does this mean that we will get a general provision that can be applied to all or almost all public activities, or will we get expanded sector-specific rules of the type we have today? I would strongly prefer a general provision that could be applied to all municipalities and all their staff.
In the interpellation answer, the Minister states that it concerns, for example, extracts from the criminal record. Does the Minister believe that this is sufficient, or should one look at possibilities to examine other data as well, such as the suspicion register, indictments that have not led to a conviction, and other publicly available information? There are, indeed, very great opportunities today to get an idea of who a person is.
Last but not least, will the intended rule changes target only organized crime or also other factors that make persons unsuitable, for example, if it is the case that a person has previously belonged to a terrorist organization? There are plenty of examples of such persons having received employment, for example, within the school system today.
I will not ask any questions about the time horizon here, because I know what the situation looks like at the Government Offices. There is no point in rushing; instead, it is better that it becomes a properly executed regulatory framework from the start.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Ludvig Aspling, for the opportunity to discuss this important issue today!
Let me begin by saying that I completely share the problem description that Ludvig Aspling describes. We have seen for far too many years now that gross organized crime, in addition to the devastating consequences it has for individual people, i.e., crime victims – the one who is shot dead or murdered in connection with a bombing etcetera – and their relatives, also has tangible system-threatening effects.
One of the most tangible expressions of this is, naturally, infiltration or pressure in various ways on the public sector. We have seen several examples of this both recently and previously, for example, that social workers are threatened or, in a more subtle way, become subjects of pressure so that they either do not dare to make decisions or, at worst, make incorrect decisions. There are examples of infiltration in city planning departments or in the part of the municipal administration where decisions are made regarding social assistance. There are examples of infiltration in political parties. The list can be long. More recently, we have also seen some quite spectacular examples of infiltration in the judiciary, even though there are not yet any legally binding judgments in that part.
Let me just say that the situation that the Södertälje case highlights is well known. We must meet it with all our strength, and that includes expanded opportunities for the municipality and others to perform relevant background checks to ensure that employees in, for example, the municipality are not part of organized crime or, through other crime, are unsuitable to hold certain positions.
One could say that a merit of the JO decision in the Södertälje case is that we have had the legal situation clarified. It also means that the policy has something concrete to hold onto. Here, I believe one can say two things at the same time.
On the one hand, JO's decision clarifies the legal situation, that is to say that the handling that Södertälje municipality, among others, has engaged in is not supported by law.
On the other hand, it is at the same time very easy to see the need for what Södertälje has wanted to achieve through these measures and to express one's recognition of that ambition in Södertälje municipality. That is why the government has also said that in the near future we will appoint an inquiry tasked with promptly addressing the situation that the JO decision aims at.
If this is to be able to happen expeditiously, that is to say as one of the fast-tracks that the government now utilizes, the issue must be delimited. This means that I envision that in a first step, we will aim at precisely the municipalities' possibilities to carry out this type of background checks. This does not, of course, mean that there are no other actors, not least state authorities, who have corresponding needs, and we will need to return to the broader measures.
I will address Ludvig Aspling's three more specific questions. I have, in fact, already answered the first question. I envision that the first step, if we are to be able to do this quickly, cannot be too broad and too general. We must aim at the Södertälje situation and first rush out to help Södertälje and other municipalities.
The second question concerned whether it is sufficient with burden registers or whether one should have the opportunity to take a broader approach. I believe there may be reason to provide the opportunity to take a broader approach, but exactly how those boundaries should be drawn, the investigator must look into and come with proposals on.
This is in line with the third question, whether it should only concern criminality. It is clear that there is also other information about people's backgrounds that is relevant in such an assessment. Exactly how these cuts shall be made we will return to in the directives, and then we will task the investigator to more closely set the boundaries for such extended background checks.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Madam Speaker! Thank you very much, Minister, for a detailed answer! I nevertheless have confidence that this government takes this issue significantly more seriously than the previous one, which actually just shifted this problem onto the municipalities and then let them manage as best they could.
The direction that the Minister describes also seems reasonable to me. The question of promptness is, of course, very important.
I would like to make a small addition, if there is time. Great Britain has a very well-developed system for handling this type of problem. They have something called DBS, Disclosure and Barring Service – a system for personnel screening that was not developed specifically to handle criminal clans but rather to handle other types of crime. It can involve people who have been convicted of sexual offenses or something else that makes them unsuitable to be in a school environment or in the public sector in general.
What is so well-developed with the British system is, firstly, that it expands the mandatory register check area to become very large. It is therefore not about a facultative rule that gives permission to perform a certain check, but it becomes mandatory to perform checks for very many – the entire British school system, for example.
Another thing that makes this so effective is that it is criminally sanctioned. That is, according to criminal law, it is not permitted for persons working within the British public administration to skip the mandatory registration area that this law mandates. There are therefore very strong incentives to ensure that people behave.
Unfortunately, I believe something similar would be needed. It would require significantly more preparation if one were to go that way, but in the long perspective, I believe this would be needed. We unfortunately cannot rely on the municipalities handling this today. They are already infiltrated by criminal clans. There is a huge risk that those who are to monitor this in the future are also people who have these types of contacts. The problem is therefore deeper than we perhaps understand right now.
The third thing that Great Britain has is a well-developed agency support. This can be quite cumbersome to do for municipalities - it depends a bit on how one sets it up. It can be labor-intensive, and it can cost money. I am unsure how much Södertälje has paid for this private company, but it looks to be a rather extensive piece of work. I can imagine that it is quite expensive.
In the United Kingdom, there is very strong authority support. There is an instance that one can send a request to, and then one receives a statement according to both the criminal record and the suspicion record. A security check is performed, and they look at whether the person has been indicted without having been convicted. There is a long row of such circumstances that one can get information about by sending a request to an authority in one place. The system is very smooth and easy to use, in other words. I think that is quite important - that it becomes a system that is watertight and easy for the municipalities to use.
I just want to make this joint submission. If there is an opportunity to take a broader approach to this issue further ahead after the Södertälje situation is handled, I really hope that the Minister is considering traveling to the United Kingdom and looking at how they work with their DBS system.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Let me begin by again confirming that the Södertälje case and other similar cases underline the importance of us moving forward and finding ways that allow us to reach a regulation where a balance is made between, on one hand, the crime-fighting, or perhaps rather crime-preventing, motives that underlie making this type of extraction from the load register and proper background checks, and on the other hand, of course, the privacy considerations that are made.
I also believe that the need, which we have touched upon in this exchange, is broader and does not only exist in the municipalities. State actors and authorities describe that there are corresponding challenges in the large part of the public sector that does not conduct the most security-sensitive activities, where there is specific regulation and specific obligations to perform rigorous security checks.
I want to confirm this need once again, and that is why we say that we want to set an investigation in motion as soon as possible, which, in addition, with a clearly defined mandate, can proceed expeditiously to handle the municipalities' situation.
One should not rule out that even the narrower approach can benefit from a certain international perspective, but it is clear that the more far-reaching systemic changes must be handled through a broader approach. There, I think it is quite self-evident that what must be included as an essential part of such a mission is an international perspective and comparison. We shall, of course, ultimately incorporate international experiences into a Swedish legal system. The British system that Ludvig Aspling describes is interesting. There are also other systems that are interesting. I believe it is, not least, wise to also look at our Nordic neighboring countries in order to be able to place our rules in a more comparative light.
It is inherent in the nature of the matter, if one starts from today's situation, that certain authorities have this type of powers. This applies to certain purposes or activities and is often also limited to certain crimes. It is clear that social development easily makes this regulatory framework appear dated. In this entire approach, we will therefore also need to look at what, in that case, should be included in such background checks.
I believe that the crime prevention interest and the public privacy interest – that is, protecting citizens, municipalities, and authorities against this type of crime – is naturally extremely strong and justifies a shift in positions.
Then we must also, naturally, be aware that the information we are talking about is very privacy-sensitive. For example, the suspicion register is more sensitive than the criminal record in that it lists suspicions of crimes that have never been finally adjudicated. We do not, therefore, know if the suspicions had a counterpart in actual criminality. It is clear that the wider we make this funnel, the more privacy-sensitive it becomes.
I am, however, very convinced that we must move the positions forward and that through a proper investigation of these issues we will be able to find a more modern regulation, adapted to the present day, and at the same time safeguard legal certainty interests in a good way.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Madam Speaker! Thank you very much for the answer, Minister! It still feels reassuring that the Minister has obviously reflected on these questions.
An expression that the Minister sometimes uses is pattern-breaking measures. I find that quite interesting, because what is needed right now is for Sweden to break old patterns. I would therefore express the need in exactly the same way.
The patterns we primarily must break are how we think regarding which activities are security-sensitive and which are not. We have historically not had large-scale, family-based criminal networks that are simply specialized in committing different types of crimes against the public for pure profit. We have not had this previously, but it is something that is new.
We must get it into our heads that today it is a much larger area of the Swedish public administration that is exposed to this and that is a security risk and sensitive material in a way that it has not been previously.
I also think that the question of proportionality is very interesting here, because when one makes this type of intervention in personal integrity, one performs a type of proportionality assessment. It must be in proportion to the interest that the measure is intended to serve. Here, one must also start thinking a bit differently. What is the interest in being able to perform this type of security checks today, for example within an area that we perhaps not so long ago saw as quite unproblematic – elderly care, municipal care, or something of the sort?
Today it is significantly more important. The reason why this type of testing is needed is simply much heavier today. This makes, in my opinion, that the balancing act looks different. It opens up for significantly more intrusive measures, precisely because the need is so much greater. What we are actually talking about is the trust for much of the public sphere which is quite brutally undermined when we have this type of infiltration.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I would like to begin my concluding remarks with the question of the balance between goals and means, that is, proportionality. I believe it is a question that has a general significance for a reorganization of, for example, the crime policy, but also for other parts of the justice policy that this government, with the support of the Sverigedemokraterna, is carrying out.
The balance between effective crime fighting or effective crime prevention on one hand and personal privacy on the other is naturally influenced by societal development. It is quite obvious that societal development has brought us to a point where, in a number of different areas, we must give the interest of fighting, preventing, and deterring crime a different weight than until now. It also means that we need to make reforms and changes when it comes to the most security-sensitive activities. For example, a review is currently underway of the legislation concerning background checks regarding the most security-sensitive activities.
Now there are - as Ludvig Aspling pointed out - also other and broader motives which perhaps are not primarily a security issue in the more traditional sense but rather concern the integrity of the public administration and public decision-making, the integrity of a social worker or a building permit officer or, for that matter, the integrity of the democratic system when it comes to being able to safeguard the integrity of political parties in relation to crime.
There are other interests that justify other reforms in this area. One of the most prominent concerns background checks to avoid infiltration - that criminals get inside who undermine decision-making in the public sector and the legitimacy towards the citizens and perhaps also deceive the citizens and the public through major crimes within welfare fraud. Therefore, I am very pleased that we now have concrete plans to move forward in these issues. We are taking a first offensive step. It will be followed by more.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.