Response to interpellation 2023/24:626 on the procurement of housing places
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
M argues that gang criminals should not be allowed to have influence over or profit from public activities 1. M emphasizes that authorities have obligations and opportunities to exclude suppliers with criminal connections 1. M wants to give Bolagsverket a collective responsibility to help authorities with controls to shut out unreliable actors 2. M highlights that it is important to abolish EBO and establish a new reception system with order and structure. M argues that the government is doing what S failed to do by reducing asylum immigration and abolishing own housing 3. M emphasizes that work is being done to ensure that tax money does not end up in the criminal economy 2.
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 Maria Malmer Stenergard (M)
Madam Speaker! Ola Möller has asked me how I intend to act so that gang criminals and organized crime do not run housing for asylum seekers.
The government's obvious starting point is that gang criminals shall neither have influence over nor earn money from public activities. In connection with public procurements, procuring organizations shall check whether the suppliers participating are suitable and serious. A great responsibility lies with the authorities.
In the procurement legislation, there are both opportunities and obligations for contracting authorities to exclude certain suppliers, for example, if the representatives have been convicted of certain crimes. Contracting organizations therefore, according to the Act on Public Procurement, in some cases even have an obligation to exclude suppliers. There is also an opportunity to terminate framework agreements and called-off contracts with immediate effect if it is discovered that there are grounds for exclusion. The Swedish Migration Agency carries out checks of both companies and the representatives of the companies as far as this is possible through public registers.
The supplier control investigation (SOU 2023:43) has submitted proposals that are intended to make it possible to monitor suppliers participating in public procurements in a more efficient manner. The proposals are now being prepared within the Government Offices. It would naturally have been welcome if these rules had already been in place. At the same time, further measures are required to ensure that criminal actors are excluded from public contracts.
The government is working actively and from a holistic perspective to strengthen the public administration's resilience against this type of influence. We have therefore, as the first government, presented a national strategy against organized crime. In the strategy, the government highlights that the exploitation of public funds and the use of companies as criminal tools must be prevented. The government's direction is clear. Municipalities, regions, and authorities need to receive increased support in public procurements through better conditions to audit suppliers. This is to reduce the risk of companies with links to organized crime being awarded contracts, as well as to prevent crime in the workplace and other crime. Also, the follow-up of entered contracts needs to be improved for that purpose.
Crimes against welfare are a lucrative source of income for organized crime. Preventing the exploitation of public funds and the use of companies and other legal entities as criminal tools, as well as increasing the recovery of criminal profits, are priority measures for the government.
Ola Möller (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer! I think it is good that the government is trying to tackle organized crime and wants to do a lot against it.
What is interesting is that the government is not prepared to discuss the fundamental problem, that is, that we are commodifying our public activities. We are creating markets where there is no need for markets.
I met a police officer some time ago at a seminar on this issue of crime in the working life. After a long debate on a podium, he was asked: If you were to say one thing that could make us stop the criminal activity within the public sector, what would that be? How are we to solve the problem? The answer was: Remove the companies!
Do we not have companies that run schools, health centers and HVB-homes or of that sort, or court buildings owned by companies - or waste contracts, demolition firms and other things that are run by the public - the problem does not exist.
I am not saying that we should not use companies in public activities at all. We must do so, and we shall do so. There are sectors where it is good.
But when it comes to the Swedish Migration Agency's operations and this matter of owning the reception chain for asylum seekers - we agree that we want to get rid of EBO - is it opening Pandora's box to go out and say that we will place asylum seekers with private companies when we think we cannot manage it ourselves. We saw it during the 2015 situation with the so-called Bert Karlsson residences. They were fortune seekers who came there, and by bringing in private companies, one got a lot of shady business in return.
This will also mean that we will have a situation where private companies are to hold a capacity, and if we get a large increase in asylum seekers, it will be private companies that we will not be able to have full control over.
It is not as simple as the Minister wants to make it seem – that it is just a matter of performing an ownership check and that the person convicted of a crime is not allowed to participate in the procurement. I worked with housing policy during the previous mandate. It is a sector where many "goalies" are used. One transfers corporate ownership within families. One brings in someone from the Baltics who owns a company and has a clean record, and so on.
Yes, then you sit there. You have carried out all the checks and followed all the rules, and yet there is something shady going on. I am worried that in a number of years we will read in the newspaper that Foxtrot has been involved in one of the accommodations procured by the Swedish Migration Agency. It is this that I am worried about.
I believe there are many good companies that can do this, but it is still an activity where we expose some of the people who are most vulnerable to exploitation in society to the risk of encountering organized crime. I think one should be significantly more cautious about outsourcing this to private companies. We could resolve the capacity within the public sector and have a room for maneuver within its framework.
My question to the Minister is: Can she guarantee that in a few years we will not read in the newspaper that a group has recruited or forced people into their operations in the residences procured by Migrationsverket?
Statsrådet Maria Malmer Stenergard (M)
Madam Speaker! It is an important issue that Ola Möller raises, namely that there should be order and clarity in the procurements that the state makes. My answer, however, is not to remove all the companies. It is a classic socialist attitude that I thought not even the Social Democrats advocated. But naturally, we shall have order and clarity in the procurement.
We must also have order and clarity in the migration policy. The chaotic situation that Ola Möller describes and which led to the authorities of the Social Democratic-led government making questionable procurements during 2015 – which have been criticized by, among others, the National Audit Office – we shall not return to. That is why it is so incredibly important that we now, under the leadership of the Moderaterna, implement a migration policy that leads to order and clarity.
That is also why we are now restructuring the reception. We are doing what countless Social Democratic municipal politicians have asked the Social Democrat-led government to do for eight years, and which it said it wanted to do but never really managed to: We are abolishing EBO and establishing a new reception system. We are doing it step by step, with order and structure.
The Swedish Migration Agency was given the assignment on March 7 this year to prepare for the reformed reception. The assignment includes, among other things, analyzing the future need for accommodation for asylum seekers. By giving the agency the assignment to prepare this, it also gains time to procure good framework agreements in accordance with the applicable regulations.
The law that regulates procurement work is, as is known, the Public Procurement Act, LOU, which in turn is based on EU directives, which we are also governed by. The Swedish Migration Agency can make calls from common state agreements, for example those that Kammarkollegiet signs. LOU thus provides the possibility to set requirements regarding both grounds for exclusion, financial capacity, and labor law and social conditions.
The Swedish Migration Agency checks both the companies and the companies' representatives as far as possible through public registers, for example regarding the ultimate beneficial owner. Framework agreements and called-off contracts can be terminated with immediate effect if it is revealed that the supplier does not meet the requirements regarding the grounds for exclusion, which then include, among other things, organized crime, money laundering, failures in fulfilling obligations regarding taxes and social security contributions, and serious errors in professional practice that cause the supplier's reliability to be questioned.
This is something that we are working to further sharpen with the investigation that I mentioned in my first answer. I can guarantee Ola Möller that we will do everything in our power to combat the criminal economy and ensure that we get order and clarity in the migration policy but also order and clarity in the Swedish Migration Agency's procurements.
Ola Möller (S)
Madam Speaker! It is always lovely to hear Moderate politicians talk about public ownership. They always claim that all the public ownership we currently have is not socialism, but if one somehow wants to expand public ownership – for example, if one wants us to have a few more places – it is malicious socialism.
The boundary of where socialism begins and ends in the Moderate Party's party book is, therefore, quite fluid. We could have read that on Twitter, if nothing else, when Christofer Fjellner commented that the City of Stockholm had repurchased some hundred apartments. It was gross socialism that the public housing sector grew slightly by purchasing new apartments.
When it comes to the concept of socialism, I do not think we should take the Moderates as any truth-tellers, unless Maria Malmer Stenergard means that we have socialism right now with all the housing that the Migration Agency operates on its own initiative or, for that matter, through all of Sweden's public services.
This with LOU and EU directives is correct, but it still depends on choosing to bring in the private sector. There is no EU directive that says one must operate reception centers in the Swedish system in private hands or that one must conduct framework procurements, rather it is only when one activates privatization that these regulatory frameworks become relevant.
It is a choice one makes from the government. The Minister says that one should do everything in one's power to ensure that Foxtrot cannot recruit new members or force people into the black economy in our future reception centers - except to let the public own it. One should do everything in one's power except to own this oneself or use the public sector to handle this issue.
For me, this is remarkable. I and the minister have had a number of debates in this chamber. The minister does the classic thing, Madam Speaker. She begins to talk about the Social Democrats' eight years: You did, and you did.
Yes, the situation that was in 2015 was chaotic. There were bad procurements. One had to find solutions. Things went absolutely wrong. It is good that we have an audit that can point that out. But the interesting thing in all of this is that now you sit with the responsibility for this. I want guarantees that we will not have criminals and gross organized crime in our operations, but it is the Social Democrats who are the problem – I do not understand that logic.
We have arrived at the situation we are in, with criminals running HVB homes and health centers. It is former Moderate MPs who have terror-financed via schools. We have had extremists who have taught in SFI. Week after week we see scandals in privatizations and marketization. There is no self-criticism from the Moderates at all.
One does not see that welfare activities, the welfare system, today is a larger source of income for the criminal gangs than drugs are because we have commodified our system to pieces. Then one thinks that one should open a channel. I actually do not understand that. How can a government that says it wants to counteract the flow of money to organized crime choose to open a tap? That is what the minister is standing here and saying: We want to open a tap for the criminal gangs so that they can pump money out of welfare and the public sector.
I wonder why one is not open to saying: Yes, but we are looking into this. We might expand the own region. How can we create a concertina in the public sphere so as not to open another tap for Foxtrot?
I do not understand this. Can the Minister guarantee that Foxtrot will not recruit at the housing units that they may own in the future?
Statsrådet Maria Malmer Stenergard (M)
Madam Speaker! Everything, in any case, speaks against Jan Emanuel Johansson, who was a Social Democrat until this morning, running any new asylum centers. I say that as we now occupy ourselves with talking about representatives of each other's parties. That is the usual order in the debates with Ola Möller.
I thought we would talk about the work against organized crime, which I understand Ola Möller holds very close to his heart. No previous government has produced any national strategy against organized crime, but this government has. This is something that is extremely prioritized for us. I am still a bit questioning regarding the interpellation itself, given the Social Democrats' history when it comes to the procurement of asylum housing.
But in the strategy, public procurement is highlighted as a risk area. This is therefore something that we really pinpoint. It is a risk area for crime that must be given more attention. Public procurement generates approximately 900 billion kronor annually. State agencies, together with municipalities and regions, have noted that it occurs that procuring organizations sign agreements with criminals who in various ways act through companies or non-profit organizations. They can keep bids in the procurements low because they often do not pay, for example, taxes or follow labor laws. Sometimes the intention is also to put the company into bankruptcy.
Against this background, among other things, it is important that the supervision of public procurement is conducted effectively and is also given the right conditions. On January 1 of this year, legislative changes entered into force that give Konkurrensverket, which is the supervisory authority for public procurement, extended powers in that supervision.
The government's position is that procuring municipalities, regions and authorities should be able to receive support in connection with procurement to, if possible, identify early on bidders who have criminal intentions or who have links to organized activity.
Several government agencies possess information that could be helpful in the work of ensuring that criminal and unreliable actors are excluded from public contracts. In the report from the Supplier Control Investigation, which I mentioned earlier, proposals are made that Bolagsverket should be given a collective responsibility to help contracting authorities perform checks against various government registers.
The checks shall provide information on whether any representative of the supplier has been convicted of a crime that could potentially constitute grounds for exclusion, whether the supplier has debts regarding taxes or social security contributions and, if so, the size of them, and whether the supplier appears in any of the insolvency registers. The checks cover registers at Bolagsverket, Polismyndigheten, Skatteverket, Kronofogden, and länsstyrelsen.
These are important measures that are currently being prepared in the Government Offices. The consultation period expired in December 2023.
I can assure Ola Möller that we are taking decisive action to combat organized crime and to ensure that taxpayers' hard-earned money does not end up in the criminal economy. The answer is probably not just to abolish the companies. It is not that simple.
Ola Möller (S)
Madam Speaker! The answer is therefore that the Minister is prepared to take the risk that Foxtrot shall be able to operate reception centers in Sweden.
It is also interesting with the jumping on and that people take the credit for what happens in, for example, the issue of crime in the working life. It was we who started the center against crime in the working life, a-krimcenter. It was we who, despite there being opposition to it for a long period, introduced this that it could involve human trafficking in the case of AKI, that is, the labor immigration.
It is we who have pushed for there to be an audit obligation for small companies. We had a permit for hotel and guesthouse activities. The government is abolishing that. They do not think that any permit is needed for it. They are changing the rules for when companies need to report VAT. Point by point, they are making it easier to run small companies. This is combined with the fact that they do not address, for example, the A1 forms when it comes to posted workers. It is therefore easy to get people here from the Baltics who can work on our construction sites and who at the same time might be goalies in a company. When it no longer fits, because they get a reprimand somewhere, they have to go home.
Ivo and the School Inspectorate have not succeeded very well in their inspections of, for example, HVB homes or independent schools that have been run by terrorists, gangs, and all kinds of crooks. The trust in the state's ability to "supervise" away the problems is very great in the minister.
But I hear what the Minister is saying. It is more important to privatize and have a market in the public sector than to ensure that we do what the police themselves answer if you ask: How are we going to stop private companies from draining operations of tax money? Remove the companies from the operation! Then you will be able to stop this.
Statsrådet Maria Malmer Stenergard (M)
Madam Speaker! Now I feel that Ola Möller misquoted me, but I can leave that there.
This government is doing exactly what the Social Democrats failed to do. We are ensuring that asylum migration decreases. This means that the reception activities we are talking about will be very small, and that is how it needs to be going forward. We have the lowest number of granted asylum-related residence permits in the entire 2000s.
We are now abolishing own housing, which social democratic municipal representatives have talked about for many, many years but never succeeded with. It has led to a terrible housing segregation and great suffering.
Now we will ensure that the reception is organized in order to ensure that the asylum process is shortened. But we do it with order and tidiness, calmly and steadily. We roll out the legislation in parallel with giving Migrationsverket the assignment to prepare for the establishment of these reception centers. We will ensure that the authority follows the procurement legislation that exists. That also includes the extremely important part of following up on the procurements that have been made.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.