Response to interpellation 2024/25:105 on legal certainty regarding guardians and trusteeship
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
M believes that the regulatory framework for guardians and trustees must meet high requirements and that the public has a great responsibility to ensure that those appointed fulfill their duties 1. M welcomes an investigation that proposes increased competence requirements, better training, and a national substitute register 1 2. M argues that the problem is not solely a market failure but concerns the public's exercise of power against vulnerable people 2. M wants to create a robust order that ensures the protection of freedoms and rights for vulnerable persons 3. S believes that the current system is a market failure where companies can earn large sums of money from vulnerable individuals due to a lack of supervision 4. S argues that it is a systemic error that requires the current government to proceed with a previous investigation without delay 4 5. S argues that the legal certainty of the constitutional laws must be reflected in civil law legislation 5. S believes that the current legislation means that the state can take over people's lives in a repulsive manner 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! Laila Naraghi has asked me what measures I and the government intend to take so that the regulations regarding guardians and trustees shall be changed and become legally secure, and to stop companies from making money from the current regulation and lack of supervision. She has also asked me whether I intend, and if so when and how, to proceed with the proposals in the report Guardians and trustees - a review (SOU 2021:36).
Let me first emphasize that the questions raised by Laila Naraghi concern the protection of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Even though I, as a minister, cannot comment on individual cases, I think it is good and important that Laila Naraghi and others draw attention to these. I am keen that the regulatory framework and the system for guardians and trustees live up to high standards.
Clear and high requirements are set for those who wish to become a guardian or a legal guardian. It is required that the person in question is upright, experienced, and otherwise suitable. The assignment to be a guardian or a legal guardian is always a personal assignment, even in cases where the guardian or the legal guardian is employed by a private company.
The persons who need the support that a guardian or curator provides are often in a vulnerable situation. The public sector therefore has a great responsibility to ensure that the person appointed as a guardian or curator carries out their assignment. To ensure that all guardians and curators live up to the high requirements, it is important that the Guardian Authority conducts an active investigation in connection with the suitability assessment and subsequently follows up the control in its supervision.
In the report *Gode män och förvaltare*, a number of changes to the system of guardians and curators are proposed. The purpose is to improve the conditions for acting as a representative and to strengthen the protection for individuals. Among other things, the investigation proposes clearer regulation for when professional representatives can be appointed and an arrangement for better education and support for representatives. To improve supervision, the investigation also proposes that the competence and quality in the guardianship authority's activities should be strengthened, that clearer requirements for representatives' reporting and the guardianship authority's auditing are introduced, and that a national representative register is established.
The preparation of the report is ongoing in the Government Offices. The Government takes the work of improving the regulatory framework for proxy representation seriously and will return to the Riksdag when the preparatory work is completed.
Laila Naraghi (S)
Madam Speaker! Recently, SVT reported in Uppdrag granskning about a woman who disappeared from her home three years ago. Her guardian had decided that she should be kept hidden. In Uppdrag granskning, however, it appears that those who know the woman are convinced that the decision is wrong. Her parents are desperately searching for their daughter. Until a few years ago, the woman, who has several disabilities, lived at home with her parents in Degerfors, with the help of assistants and a guardian who has represented her and managed the finances.
The review describes, however, that the cooperation between parents, assistants, and the administrator has been marred by conflicts. The administrator applies for a restraining order against the parents, but it is rejected by the prosecutor who notes that there is no risk of threats and violence against the woman. The administrator then instead applies for protected population registration in the woman's own name with Skatteverket. The woman is moved to a secret address and disappears from all public registers.
The parents experience that their daughter has been kidnapped. Several people close to the family question why the woman is being kept hidden. There is also no documented supervision justifying why she is being kept hidden by the guardian.
When SVT manages to track down the woman, who has been moved to an apartment 65 miles from Degerfors, she expresses a wish to be able to invite family and friends to her birthday. But she cannot do that, Madam Speaker. She tells SVT: I have no phone.
What has emerged in the review is extremely serious – that a provider, in this case the company Optio, is allowed to act in this way towards vulnerable individuals and furthermore receives payment from the state for it.
Madam Speaker! The company, through its CEO, has let it be known that it has a policy of not speaking with journalists. With the help of Skatteverket, the administrator has been able to sweep away transparency - in a system that is already plagued by a lack of oversight.
The same company was also the administrator for Arne Gavelin outside Örnsköldsvik. He was placed under guardianship against his will and, after a long struggle, won in court with the help of Centrum för rättvisa, which the Minister for Justice founded and served as head of.
It is naturally a sign of health that the state, when individuals take legal action against it, can admit when the state has made a mistake. But it comes at a high price for that specific individual. How many more cases are there out there, really? And how much longer should companies like the one just mentioned be allowed to behave this way towards individual people? Must it be required that SVT or Centrum för rättvisa step in to defend people so that they are not ruthlessly exploited due to individual companies' greed for money?
Both the Minister and I know that neither SVT nor Centrum för rättvisa can help everyone when the law fails as it does. Fundamentally, this is a systemic failure – a market failure – that has enabled companies to earn gross profits from vulnerable individuals and management almost without it being visible.
Madam Speaker! Good men and women should be important pillars of support for those people in our society who are in need of representatives, but deficiencies in the current regulation have emerged.
The Social Democrat-led government therefore appointed an inquiry in 2019 on guardianship that can be trusted. It conducted a review aimed at improving supervision, creating better conditions for competent persons to act as guardians, and strengthening individuals' position and protection. Ultimately, the inquiry was about ensuring that the people in our society who are in need of a guardian can trust that they will receive the help they need. The inquiry's report was presented in 2021, and it has been subject to consultation.
It is important, Madam Speaker, that these issues are now taken forward by the current government without delay.
During the current parliamentary term, we Social Democrats in the Committee on Civil Affairs have had good contact with the Minister for Justice regarding other issues on our table. My question is now to the Minister for Justice: Can we do the same here, and can we with joint effort also change the law in this area? The basis is there to work from.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Laila Naraghi, for the opportunity to discuss these extremely important issues today! As I said in my response, they are important for a number of different reasons. I will only emphasize one. We are talking about people who find themselves in an extraordinarily vulnerable situation and where the state, the public, steps forward and takes away from the individual a more or less large part of the control over their own life.
The risk of overstepping is naturally imminent. Very high requirements must naturally be placed both on those who are to be proxies for an individual in such a situation and on the actors who are to exercise supervision over this system. Therefore, I welcome the investigation that Laila Naraghi mentions and which has been referred. There is a long series of very solid proposals in that report. They primarily aim at raising the competence requirements but also the reporting and follow-up requirements when it comes to proxies. It is also about clarifying - organizing - the supervision over this system in a very appropriate manner.
The work on this basis is ongoing in the Ministry of Justice. The intention is, of course, to return to the Riksdag with a government bill. But I would very much like to have a dialogue with the Committee on Civil Affairs on this issue, just as in many other pressing issues in the field of civil law, which remarkably often affect individuals in very vulnerable situations.
A part of this naturally concerns under what conditions even private actors shall be able to contribute as substitutes in this system. That question is also the subject of analysis in this report.
I nevertheless turn towards the simplification inherent in the word market failure. I will not go into the closer details of the two cases that Laila Naraghi refers to, but one can indeed state that in the case that was tried in court and was driven by Centrum för rättvisa, it is actually the municipal guardianship board that is, so to speak, the subject of the review and which is judged to have made a mistake.
Now I have decided that the question is subject to continued legal proceedings, but we must keep in mind that it can, of course, be a question of representatives that are private, that are public, or that are non-profit. The same high requirements must be imposed on all. And in the court case we are talking about, it is precisely a municipal guardianship board that has been held liable to this extent.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to bring that question into this whole. But to describe the entire problem primarily as a market failure, I actually think is a perspective that does not capture the full depth and breadth of the problem when it concerns the exercise of public power against individual people.
But, as I said, we have a very solid basis to work from. Work is ongoing in the Ministry of Justice. I look forward to a continued dialogue with the Committee on Justice regarding these important issues and also to eventually being able to submit concrete proposals to the Riksdag.
Laila Naraghi (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister of Justice, for the answer and the opportunity for exchange regarding this!
Previously, I was a member of the Committee on the Constitution, which every year meets with the Parliament's ombudsmen - the Parliamentary Ombudsman - for a review of their thick official report. It is a thick bundle regarding society's deficient treatment of individual citizens. Sometimes the word abuse is the correct word - abuse from the public side, just as the Minister for Justice speaks of. As the Minister for Justice knows, JO gives sharp recommendations to us legislators and to the government.
After the election, I was placed in the Committee on Civil Affairs, after six years in the KU, to continue the work on certain issues there. It is valuable to now be able to work in a committee specifically on civil law, which JO repeatedly reviews the implementation of. It is important that we are able to translate the beautiful words in our constitution – which the KU primarily works with – into real action in other law, including civil law.
Madam Speaker! What the disabled woman in Degerfors and what Arne Gavelin have been subjected to by society is not worthy of Sweden 2024. So it must not be allowed to happen. Nor is it about individual cases or exceptions. It is about systemic errors that we in the Riksdag are well aware of.
The Social Democratic-led government appointed the investigation that we have spoken about here. It is time for the current government to move forward. I wonder: When will this happen? Can a timetable be presented for this, just as we have worked around other civil law matters, so that we in the Riksdag know what we can expect from the government?
If the government thinks the proposals are insufficient, there are all the possibilities to revise them. We Social Democrats are open to dialogue and cooperation regarding this investigation, just as we have been in other matters. Even these civil law system failures regarding trusteeship create enormous human suffering, and it is absurd that individual companies or other individuals can make money from it.
Madam Speaker! Houses have been sold without consent. Accounts have been emptied, and home insurance policies have been misdirected.
Of the 91 guardianship boards reviewed in the 2023 inspection reports up until the beginning of December last year, 67 received criticism from the county administrative boards that conducted the reviews. This shows a mapping that TT has made.
In total, over 3.4 million kronor are missing from the individuals' accounts - in the vast majority of cases, they are children. In several cases, it is obvious that the money has gone to something other than to the vulnerable person, i.e., the principal.
Madam Speaker! Professor emerita Eva Blomberg wrote recently in DN Debatt about the proposals in the investigation that we have spoken about here. At the end of the article, she wrote:
"If I were a criminal, I would invest in this industry. About 40 billion kronor are in the pot. Every day, those who could be suitable victims are advertised, and not infrequently where they live."
It should not be so difficult to cheat money out of them in a control system that relies solely on accounts being audited once a year by overworked officials.
Madam Speaker! I really want to say in this context that there are many good men and administrators who do a fantastic job, who work hard, who would never dream of being cheated and who make great personal sacrifices so that the principals can manage everyday life.
But these also point to flaws in today's system. Even for these, the system needs to be changed, because we cannot continue to have what we have today.
The question I have asked earlier remains: When will we see the government move from words to action? We have a solid basis with this investigation. We must ensure that the spirit of the constitutional laws regarding legal certainty and personal integrity is also included in the civil law legislation regarding guardians and administrators and the principals whom these persons are tasked to help, not exploit.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I sign on to the description of reality that Laila Naraghi expresses. It is also the background of experience that serves as the basis for the investigation that was conducted and for the solid referral work that has taken place since then, and which is also the starting point for the work that is currently being carried out in the Ministry of Justice in order to be able to return to the Riksdag with a well-elaborated bill.
It is clear that it will encompass a number of different issues, but since Laila Naraghi mentions it specifically, I shall mention two.
One thing, of course, is the obligations that the proxy shall have when it comes to reporting what one, for example, does with the financial resources belonging to the principal, i.e., the person who is placed under the management.
The second thing is what requirements should be placed on the person exercising the supervision when it comes to reviewing that type of documentation and exercising control in the first place. It is obvious in light of the various audit cases being highlighted here that there are major deficiencies, and it is those deficiencies that we will now, with joint efforts, plug.
I do not intend to give any date for that today, but I can, however, say that once we have dated the sprint in the ongoing work, I will of course ensure that the members of the Civil Affairs Committee are kept informed about this so that even the process that then kicks off in cooperation between the Government Offices and the Riksdag becomes transparent and predictable for all stakeholders.
Laila Naraghi (S)
Madam Speaker! We stand here today, on November 5, 2024, with legislation that means that the state, through administrators and guardians, has the opportunity to take over people's entire lives in an utterly repulsive way, something that investigations have shown and which I have also sought to highlight with this interpellation.
It is a piece of legislation where the state can in practice declare people like Arne Gavelin incompetent, where others, as it appears, can in principle be kidnapped for the sake of money, where the supervision is deficient and where large sums of money disappear from vulnerable people, often children.
The only way to protect oneself or get any information at all seems to be to have SVT or Centrum för rättvisa help one, but both the minister and I know that neither SVT nor Centrum för rättvisa can help everyone when it is the law that is failing. Fundamentally, this is a system failure - a system failure that also includes market failures.
How long is this allowed to continue? We Social Democrats took the first steps in government to change this. An investigation was commissioned, proposals were submitted and referred, and now it is up to the current government to take the next step. I would therefore like to ask if what the Minister for Justice announced will occur during this mandate period.
Madam Speaker! I remember how, as an SSU member in the early 2000s, I was impressed by Gunnar Strömmer when, as a former MUF chairman, he founded Centrum för rättvisa to support individuals against the authorities—against the state—for here I was so in agreement with him. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I come from Småland, with our historical heritage, but I know that there are many Swedes across the country who are horrified that the state can act in this way.
I really hope that Gunnar Strömmer can see the necessity of tackling this now that he himself is the Minister of Justice and a representative of the state. Now the ball is in his court. I would very much like to continue to be in agreement with him that the state must not treat people this way!
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Once again, thanks to Laila Naraghi for the opportunity to discuss these extraordinarily important issues today! It also serves as a very useful reminder to all who are decision-makers at the state, regional, and municipal levels, as well as legislators and those working in the Government Offices, that the consequences of what we engage in are ultimately borne by individual people and often also by people in very vulnerable situations.
To establish a legal-historical perspective on these issues, I am very pleased that we now find ourselves in a contemporary era where very many also see that individual people have rights that ultimately must be able to be enforced against the state in court, even though it is clear that we would all prefer not to have it go that far. We want to create an order that is so robust and that ensures the protection of civil and human rights for the most vulnerable in relation to the public that as few transgressions as possible should need to occur. For the event that it does occur, there must, of course, be supervision and systems that detect this and hold responsible persons and actors accountable for it and ensure that the individual person receives the redress that he or she deserves.
That is why I think it feels very good that there is a solid basis of investigation and very thoroughly worked-out referral comments on those proposals. There is also work ongoing in the Ministry of Justice with the intention of returning to the Riksdag with a legislative proposal that can make this system more robust so that it, to an even greater extent than today, stands on the side of the vulnerable and ensures a full, practical, and effective protection of rights for everyone who becomes the subject of these types of measures.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.