Response to interpellation 2025/26:538 on reduced state presence and service

Civilministern Erik Slottner (KD)

Madam Speaker! Peder Björk has asked me how I assess the overall development of the state's presence and service in the country since 2022 and whether I am prepared to take measures to once again strengthen the physical state service throughout Sweden.

Initially, I would like to emphasize that the government considers state presence and service throughout the country to be important for simplifying things for individuals and increasing public benefit. A state presence maintains the legitimacy and trust of the state administration. The government therefore sees it as important to follow the distribution of state jobs in the country.

The government's administrative policy is based on the authorities themselves – based on the goals and tasks that the Riksdag and the government have established – deciding to a large extent how the activities shall be organized in order to best meet the activities' goals. This means that it is to a large extent the authorities themselves that are responsible for their organization.

The authorities' localization decisions and how these affect the state presence is something that the government continuously follows up on. On several occasions, the government has tasked the county administrative boards to report on how the state presence and service are developing in the counties. The latest report was received in June 2024, and it showed that there were authorities and workplaces in all 21 counties and in 270 of the 290 municipalities. During the period 2019–2023, an increase in the number of authorities occurred in seven counties, while a decrease occurred in an equal number of counties. In the remaining counties, the number of authorities remained unchanged. The next report on the distribution of state workplaces shall be reported by October 15, 2026, at the latest.

Regarding Statens servicecenter, the government considers the service offices to be important for providing government agency services. At the same time, the operations need to be streamlined. Some offices have been decommissioned, and additional offices may be decommissioned to ensure an efficient operation. The government has tasked Statens servicecenter with developing a plan for the organization of the service office network. It appears from the assignment that service offices shall, in the long term, be located in all functional labor market regions – this is to meet individuals' needs for local government service within a reasonable geographical distance.

In the two partial reports submitted by Statens servicecenter, it appears both the agency's starting points and principles for the future organization of the service centers throughout the country, and that four to five service centers are planned to be established during 2026 in FA-regions that currently lack local state service and service centers. Offices in the remaining FA-regions that lack local state service are expected to be established during 2027.

The Government works continuously with a state presence throughout the country and assesses that there are good conditions to make trade-offs when such issues are raised.

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

Peder Björk (S)

Madam Speaker! When Erik Slottner took office as Minister for Civil Affairs in the SD government, he highlighted the importance of state presence. He spoke warmly about service offices. He also highlighted them as a successful way to make public service more accessible. But then, Madam Speaker, something happened. Other things became more important for the Minister for Civil Affairs and his Sweden Democrat friends. Then the closure of service offices began, and the state presence decreased.

At most, Sweden has had 148 service offices during this mandate period. At the end of 2025, 125 remained. According to the plan that the government itself has established, further closures await this year and in the coming years. This, Madam Speaker, is not an expansion and not a reinforcement, but it is a decommissioning.

But, Madam Speaker, this is not really about figures and numbers of offices. It is about people – about elderly people who need help with contact with authorities, about people who lack digital habits and who need help from real people at a physical office, and about the person who needs to meet a person of flesh and blood when something goes wrong with the pension, the sickness benefit or, for that matter, the tax return.

For these people, it really matters whether the state is nearby or many miles away. That is exactly why the service centers were such a success from the very beginning. The service centers gathered public services in one place and made them truly accessible. But this SD government has done the opposite. They chose to reduce the budget for the service centers by 130 million kronor. At the same time, during the mandate period, they have implemented tax cuts worth billions of kronor, targeted at the richest. It shows that it is not about a lack of money. It is fundamentally about political priorities. When the SD government has prioritized between present state services and new tax cuts, they have time and again chosen the tax cuts.

Madam Speaker! The most interesting thing in the Minister's response to my interpellation is probably that which is not said there. Not once does the Minister say that the development from 148 to 125 service offices is good. Not once does the Minister say that fewer service offices means better service. Not once does the Minister say that longer distances to the state is a success.

Instead, the government refers to the authorities. But Erik Slottner is not the director-general. Erik Slottner is the civil minister. When he and the SD government reduce the budget for the service offices, he knows very well what the consequences will be.

Madam Speaker! I would like to ask if the Minister considers that the development from 148 service offices to 125 service offices and further planned closures is an expression of strengthened public service throughout the country.

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Ida Ekeroth Clausson (S)

Madam Speaker! On 11 February 2025, I participated in an interpellation debate with the Minister for Civil Affairs regarding a potential closure of the service office in Mariestad. I asked what consequences the closure of the service office would have and how the Minister would act to ensure citizens' access to state services throughout the country.

Now we have the answer. The service office in Mariestad has been closed, and other offices in Skaraborg have had changed opening hours. It is clear that access to state services has deteriorated. It is extra sad that those who have lost the service are the group in society who perhaps are in the greatest need of it.

An employee I have spoken with says that residents from northern Skaraborg hardly come to the office. This concerns people who were often seen at the office in Mariestad. It was primarily older pensioners that they often met there. It is a group that they previously helped to get the correct compensation, for example, when their rent costs have changed. It is about older people who have worked a whole life and done their part for Sweden who have now lost the opportunity for state service in the autumn of their lives and perhaps do not receive the compensation they are entitled to.

The employee argues that young people with disabilities are another vulnerable group and describes that he fears that individuals who previously came in to get help applying for the correct benefits now need to turn to the municipality to receive social assistance. He mentioned an individual who declared zero kronor in income, i.e., a person who one knows would be entitled to other types of compensation.

This will be worse for individuals, but it will also be worse and more expensive for the country's municipalities. I would like to repeat my questions from February last year with a slightly different approach. Does the Minister agree that the closure of the service centers has had negative consequences for many across Sweden? How has the Minister actually acted to ensure state service throughout the country after many service centers were closed?

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

Sanna Backeskog (S)

Madam Speaker! I would like to start by truly thanking the interpellor Peder Björk and many other colleagues who have fought so persistently for the country's service offices. That struggle was clearly needed.

Madam Speaker! Last week I had the privilege of visiting Träffpunkt Nygatan 77 in Gävle. It is an important operation for people with mental ill health. Many of them cannot work for various reasons even though they would obviously have wished they could. We had several interesting conversations, and something that was clear during my visit was what important function the service centers fulfill for many people.

Being affected by more severe mental ill-health is, of course, very tough, and life does not become easier due to the administrative burden that it can entail with contacts not only with doctors and the municipality but also with authorities such as Arbetsförmedlingen and Försäkringskassan. One often has difficulties with forms and certificates that need to be filled out. The fear of making a mistake is, of course, great. One misunderstanding, one wrong cross and you could be liable for repayment! Of course, we should all do the right thing, but the service centers play an important role by clearing up questions and being helpful so that everything turns out correctly.

The visitor surveys that the service centers themselves conduct show that the visitors are very satisfied with the activities that the Minister for Civil Affairs says must be streamlined. But 96 percent of the visitors believe that they have received a good reception and that they received the help they needed in time. Of the visitors, 95 percent also experienced that they received an answer within a reasonable time. These are indeed pleasing surveys, and I am incredibly proud to belong to a party whose then Minister for Civil Affairs during the previous parliamentary term understood the importance of service centers and invested more than ever across the whole country and in all of us people in the whole country who are in need of contact with the state.

Cut to 2025 and this government's "tear down post-it notes" policy. It is post-it notes that symbolize security, presence, and state service for us. Civil Minister Erik Slottner and the government, together with the Sverigedemokraterna, have decided that the state service is too good in Sweden's rural areas and countryside. Therefore, many of the country's service offices have now been shut down.

In my county, Gävleborg, the offices in Bollnäs and Sandviken have closed their doors. For the whole of western Gästrikland, this means a significantly worsened community service. The closures also affect residents in Hofors and Ockelbo municipalities. What affects Bollnäs also affects the residents in Ovanåker.

The journey to the nearest service office will become significantly longer, and suddenly several hours must be allocated and planned for a visit. This is nothing that appears in the government's impact assessment. It says something about how deficient and ill-considered the proposal is.

The news about the closed service offices has shaken our county. Politicians from several parties have protested loudly, for one knows how it affects the entire municipalities.

It is fortunate that there is an election soon, Madam Speaker. The voters clearly see how the Sverigedemokraterna, Moderaterna, and Kristdemokraterna are investing heavily in wealthy people in Stockholm but not in the rest of the country.

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Adrian Magnusson (S)

Madam Speaker! I have participated in a number of interpellation debates with the Minister regarding state presence, state service, the state's service office, and so on. Before today's debate, I wondered whether I should refrain from participating again, but then I remembered that during the last tax declaration period, many voters in Skåne contacted me. That is because the service office in Ystad is not closed at the moment – but they have no premises. There is therefore no presence, and it could happen that it is closed. We shall see. I really hope not. I think this shows how important this activity is for many people.

A voter who reached out had assumed that he would be able to get help with some tricky tax return matters. But it simply wasn't possible, because the service office was closed in Ystad – as was the case in a number of other places in Skåne since the government began to scale back Statens servicecenter. Eslöv, for example, closed on May 29. Trelleborg has closed. Landskrona has closed.

Some of the municipalities have quite high unemployment. Unemployment is high in Skåne. Landskrona is one such municipality. The closures mean that the personal service that one can get as an unemployed person who needs support from someone has decreased significantly.

I intended to make some reflections regarding the Minister's answer. I just want to clarify for those who are listening and watching today, and perhaps in hindsight, that the Minister says the government's administrative policy is based on the agencies largely determining their own structure, if I put it that way, i.e., where they should be located and so on. I just want everyone to understand that it is a political decision. It is not something that comes from a divine power, even if we are debating with a Christian Democrat. It is a highly conscious political decision that it should be so.

We have also seen this within other agencies. The Swedish Tax Agency is currently phasing out a number of offices. This is happening because the government has actively chosen not to tell the Swedish Tax Agency that they should be present in more places in the country. It should probably, on the contrary, be perceived as an encouragement for reductions of state presence around the country. This applies, for example, to the Swedish Tax Agency and the State Service Center.

It is important to point out that other decisions could have been made. But the government's policy is that the authorities are allowed to scale back their activities. In some cases, the appropriations are also reduced, and that is how it becomes like this.

In many parts, it seems to be a move from the government's side, which needs to be pointed out. One sometimes speaks of the state's presence being increased, but I am a bit unsure about what it is that one is expanding. The defense? Then there will be a few more military personnel in their positions. That can be a way to increase state presence. Otherwise, the government's active policy has meant that one does not need to see so much state presence out in the country, but instead, one lets agencies phase out their activities.

As has been said, there are state actors to whom one is happy to give other assignments. Systembolaget is perhaps the best example. They have a clear mandate to be present in all 290 municipalities in the country.

Now, I am not saying that Statens servicecenter should exist in all 290 municipalities in the country, but one could give another assignment to Statens servicecenter if one considers the activity to be important. That is something one has chosen not to do, which is an active political decision. I think that needs to be repeated, especially since we are soon facing an election.

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Eva Lindh (S)

Madam Speaker! Perhaps the SD government thought that the reduction in the number of service offices would not garner much attention. There may not have been any big, booming headlines about the political decision that has been made, but it has not passed unnoticed. People out there feel it, especially during tax declaration periods, as Adrian Magnusson mentioned, but also in general.

I am going to tell you about a woman I met three weeks ago. She was a very up-to-date person, I discovered. I had not met her before, but she came up to me and said that she had seen that there was going to be a debate here and that there used to be debates about government service offices.

She said: "I think you can ask that civil minister if he can handle the questions I have, because I want to be an upright person. I used to go to the service office and get help so that I did things correctly. But who is going to do that now? I have no one who can help me."

So now I ask the Minister for Civil Affairs if he might perhaps be able to help her check if she has filled in her declaration papers correctly. It is, in itself, too late now, but it could be different in the future. This is how it affects people.

It is not only this woman but also others who tell of the worry about no longer being able to get help to do the right thing. They tell of the difficulty of filling out forms, of understanding decisions and of getting answers to questions from authorities.

I also saw that very clearly when I worked as an assistance assessor. There are many people who really need support. It is not so easy to have contact with authorities. We could absolutely make it easier. That job also needs to be done. But it is not easy.

In Östergötland, this is clearly noticeable. Norrköping's city office has closed. Motala's has closed. Finspång's has closed. And since the office in Tranås has also closed, it affects many people in the southern parts of Östergötland.

It is long distances even in Östergötland, even though it is located centrally. It is a long way to travel, especially for those people who often need help such as this. One does not always have a car, and public transport does not always work so well in sparsely populated and rural areas. It can therefore be difficult to get to, for example, Linköping, which still has its service office.

That is why one becomes a bit thoughtful. When the government made the decision to cut resources, one should still have understood what it would mean. One perhaps did not understand exactly which ones would be shut down. I don't think perhaps one sat and drew it out on the map just then. But one should have understood what this means for people and how much it would affect.

One should also have thought about what the country looks like. Sweden is not Stockholm, Gothenburg, or Malmö. A very large part of our country is not large cities. In those places, it becomes more difficult with the contact with the authorities.

I therefore want to ask a question to the Minister for Civil Affairs. What does he say to all those who feel anxiety and who truly miss their service office, and what does he say to those who have lost hope that there will be a new one where they live?

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

Civilministern Erik Slottner (KD)

Madam Speaker! One can also get the feeling in this debate that Statens servicecenter as an authority has been shut down and that all service offices are gone. That is not the case. We heard here that there are 125 offices around the country. That is more than when Stefan Löfven was Prime Minister, who initiated the whole thing.

Things are being shaken up. Yes, they certainly are.

He initiated this reform, and I believe there were 119 offices when he stepped down as Prime Minister. There are therefore more offices today than there were when Stefan Löfven stepped down as Prime Minister. We can probably calm down a bit regarding where we stand on the issue.

We are now focusing on the so-called FA regions, where we have labor market regions. This means that Statens servicecenter will open four new offices in Dorotea, Pajala, Övertorneå and Hällefors during the autumn. Congratulations! These four municipalities will get new offices, and it was very happy news when this was reported. It was nice to be able to give that announcement.

In addition, the government has given a mandate to Statens servicecenter to work more with mobile solutions in order to be able to be present in more locations and at times when the need is greatest. In this way, resources can be used as effectively and well as possible.

The government naturally has an ongoing work to see where money can be used better. Can we free up money somewhere, including to expand the justice system and defense, which we have been very focused on?

The state presence is increasing with full force in large parts of the country, not least in connection with the expansion of the justice system. People now see police on streets and squares to a completely different extent than they did previously.

On one of my municipal trips, which I make as Civil Minister, I was in Luleå. There I met the police. The area police are significantly more numerous now in Luleå and can do much more contact-building with the citizens. Talk about the state presence increasing in parts of the country with one of the most important state institutions we have, namely the police!

The prison and probation service is being expanded at a rapid pace. It also creates new jobs all over Sweden. Not to mention the defense!

The National Audit Office issued a report with some criticism that the establishment of Statens servicecenter had proceeded very quickly and that we perhaps had not used the money as effectively as we could have. We took the criticism seriously. We also gave Statens servicecenter a freer mandate to decide where in Sweden the offices do the most good.

The government has also given a number of guidelines to the FA regions. But the number of visits shall also be guiding, as well as where the offices do the most good. Thus, they can work with mobile solutions.

The authority has informed me that they are working at full capacity on the flexible mobile office solutions and foresee that they will be able to establish several such in the future. They will be able to be of great use all over Sweden. As I said in the interpellation answer, they estimate that there will be an office in all 71 FA-areas.

I therefore have quite a lot of confidence in these offices. They have a very important operation. They are, as mentioned, in 125 locations today and will probably be in more locations in the future. Many places that previously lacked an office will get one, thanks to the mobile solutions.

No matter how much Peder Björk sits here and shakes his head, I am full of confidence regarding state presence throughout the country.

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

Peder Björk (S)

Madam Speaker! It is actually quite ridiculous to hear the Minister talk about this being about efficiency when the Minister sits in a government that is increasing the Government Offices' budget by over 2 billion this mandate period and then pretends to care about the state's money and prioritize something else and therefore cuts 130 million from the state's service offices.

Furthermore, the Minister does not want to take responsibility for where in the country these service offices shall be located or how the reduction shall take place; instead, he and the bourgeois government have, as in so many other cases, outsourced the responsibility to an agency.

The consequence of this was that offices were not closed where there were reasons to consider whether the need was large or small, without offices being closed where the lease agreements were about to expire.

This is how the SD government rules, and it has consequences for individuals' everyday lives.

Madam Speaker! Soon Erik Slottner will have been Minister for four years, and then it may be time to take stock. I understand that the Minister does not want to talk about the results when it comes to state presence and service. It is not just a few individual offices here and there that have been closed, but according to the Minister's change plan, a quarter of all service offices are to be removed. A quarter is not just a small margin.

Madam Speaker! It is not only the public service through service centers that has deteriorated during the mandate period. There has also been a centralization of the Swedish Tax Agency's local offices, and Försäkringskassan and Arbetsförmedlingen have reduced their local presence. Furthermore, a government headquarters in northern Sweden has been moved to Stockholm through active policy by the government.

For people, state service is about getting help. It can be meeting a caseworker, getting answers to questions, or getting support when digital contact is not enough. But here, the development is going completely in the wrong direction under the leadership of Minister Erik Slottner. It is difficult not to describe it as anything other than a retreat of the state from large parts of the country.

We Social Democrats make a completely different choice. We see the service centers as an investment in precisely service, accessibility, and trust, and we see state presence and service as a tool to hold the country together. We want to strengthen the local state presence and develop the service centers, not phase them out.

Madam Speaker! I ask: Is the Minister satisfied with his contribution to state presence and service after his four years in the SD government?

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Ida Ekeroth Clausson (S)

Madam Speaker! An employee at a service office in Skaraborg told me that service offices spread democracy and help to create an understanding of the social contract. One can get answers to questions about why we pay tax in Sweden and who can receive housing allowance, among many other things.

When the Social Democrats were in government, a major focus was that the state should become more visible in our elongated country. The current government has destroyed this in an instant. State presence throughout the country increases public trust and gives legitimacy to the exercise of authority. But this government took its hand away from state presence throughout the country, not only in the form of state jobs but also when it comes to the accessibility of the citizen-facing authorities' services.

For a person who is in a state of digital exclusion and cannot use BankID, there is no alternative to the service centers. But the government has now severely limited this possibility for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

The Minister seemed alarmingly satisfied in his answers here, and I would therefore like to thank my colleague Peder Björk for initiating this interpellation debate so that we can clearly show how the state has withdrawn under the Tidö Government. I look forward to the autumn election when this negative policy can come to an end.

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Sanna Backeskog (S)

Madam Speaker! When I listen to the debate and after having followed the Minister for Civil Affairs' and the government's policy for many years, I think it would be good if the Minister could be clear about what the government actually has for future plans for local state services throughout the country. First, it is decided to reduce the funding, which resulted in many closed service offices. Immediately after that, it was said that service offices shall be present in all FA-regions. Now Bollnäs and Ovanåker is an FA-region, but the service office is closed. You are phasing out and developing at the same time; it is accelerated and it is braked – and those who are affected are the service offices' visitors. Furthermore, Bollnäs was not included when the Minister for Civil Affairs presented offices to be opened, so here I would like to have a clarification.

It is obviously good to have more police across the whole country. It is something we Social Democrats have pushed for and invested in. But police stations are also being closed down.

Virtually no prisons are being built north of the Dalälven, despite the need being great and many municipalities raising their hands and wanting to welcome the Prison and Probation Service's prisons with construction-ready land, expanded public transport, and competent labor.

The new police training was placed in Uppsala, a stone's throw from Stockholm, despite the fact that both Högskolan i Gävle and Högskolan Dalarna stood ready and were perfectly good alternatives.

It would obviously have been better with a government that ensured that service offices, police, correctional services and other important authorities could join forces for establishments throughout Sweden and take advantage of each other's synergies so that the whole country could hold together, live and gain security through state presence and service. Sweden and the Swedish people would have definitely benefited from that.

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Adrian Magnusson (S)

Madam Speaker! I shall make a few short reflections on what the Minister of State said.

The Minister has also previously spoken about the mobile solutions, but for the time being, such a local presence is the state's equivalent of the unicorn – everyone has heard of it, but no one has seen it. But we can well hope that the mobile solutions will come.

The Minister also raised the issue of the police stations. But as Member Backeskog explained, many police stations have closed during the mandate period, and that is hardly a sign of increased local presence.

Institutions are also being raised. Not so many institutions are built overall; it takes a very long time to build them. I have calculated it, and I believe, for example, that it took longer to build an institution in Trelleborg than it took to build the Öresund Bridge. It is therefore interesting that the Minister highlights just that as an example of increased state presence.

I am a member of the Committee on Employment. In certain contexts, the members from the Moderates and Christian Democrats, the Sweden Democrats and the Liberals here in the chamber say: Now, the local presence of the Public Employment Service shall increase, now we are turning around the Public Employment Service and now the local presence shall increase.

At the same time, we see that the authority that is supposed to serve and help the unemployed across the country is phasing out its presence. It does not add up. Either one hand does not know what the other is doing, or one is sliding a bit on the truth regarding Arbetsförmedlingen's local presence and the shift that one claims to want to make. I know what I believe is the correct answer to that question.

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Eva Lindh (S)

Madam Speaker! I asked the Minister for Civil Affairs for an answer for Hjördis, as we can call her. I have noted and written down the answer to her question: that she, like we can calm down a little bit and that the money can be used better. That was the answer I received from the rostrum and which I shall send along.

But we do not want to slow down, rather we want to increase the pace. There are many things we need to tackle after we have hopefully won the election in the autumn, and this was one such thing. So no, we do not want to slow down.

When it comes to the fact that the money can be used better, we have completely different views on what the money should be used for. We think that it should be used to make the whole country live. Part of that is increased state presence, and another part is to give the whole country better conditions.

We do not think it is right that the money should be used to lower the tax for those who already have a lot or to give more money to themselves, that is to say, to ensure that others streamline but not oneself, for example in the Government Offices.

So no, we do not have the same view, and that is something I am proud of. I am a member of and a Member of Parliament for the Social Democrats because I believe in a society that holds together and the importance of strengthening trust throughout the country. It is about knowledge of democracy, as Ida Gabrielsson was touching upon, but also about people who need help getting it. That is actually what the debate here today is about.

I thank you for the debate and, despite everything, wish the Minister and everyone else a pleasant summer.

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Civilministern Erik Slottner (KD)

Madam Speaker! I thank Eva Lindh for wishing me a pleasant summer anyway. The same to you, I can truly say.

On the other hand, one might wonder if Peder Björk has woken up with Tourette's syndrome or something, because there is a lot of "SD-government" here and there. He really enjoys it when he gets to say it, because he knows that I don't like it. It has to do with the fact that I think it is false marketing and that it involves spreading falsehoods. Since SD is not in the government, it cannot by definition become an SD-government.

It is as if I were going to keep saying that the previous government was a V-government. I never said that, because it was not a V-government. Sure, one was dependent on V to get one's policy through in the Riksdag, but it was not a V-government for that. It was an SMP-government, except during the last months when it was a pure S-government.

We are a KDML government that has a parliamentary cooperation with SD. That is why it is difficult for me to answer questions posed to a minister in an SD government, for no such thing exists.

I can, however, remind [you] of the economic conditions. When one reads the Social Democrats' shadow budget, one might get the impression that they are restoring the entire appropriation to Statens servicecenter, but they are not doing that – hope springs! They are restoring some millions, but those funds will not be enough to restore all the service offices that existed when there were the most offices. That is what I want to remind the Social Democrats of.

Again: There are, therefore, more offices today than when Stefan Löfven stepped down as Prime Minister. A picture is being painted of the service being erased for all people across the country, despite the fact that we have more offices than when Löfven was Prime Minister. One might then wonder what it looked like during his time.

Then it was painted here that a lot of state jobs are disappearing all over the country, but the statistics do not show that. They do not show that the state presence in the country is decreasing, but it is actually kept quite intact, with the exception that we are increasing the state presence by expanding the correctional services, the police force, and the defense. That makes the state presence increase.

In many places in the country where there are no state jobs, people are now getting such jobs, and significantly more residents outside of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö will get to see police officers who have time to work preventatively, in order to identify, for example, children and young people in the risk zone of falling into serious crime. This is what this government has done, and it is a very good prioritization when it comes to the state's tax money.

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Peder Björk (S)

Madam Speaker! When this parliamentary term began, Sweden had more service offices than today. When the parliamentary term is over, Sweden will have even fewer. That is the reality. It is also the result of the SD government's policy that people all around the country now actually see.

Madam Speaker! There is a clear dividing line in Swedish politics. For the SD government, state presence is something one talks about. For us Social Democrats, it is something one builds. When we summarize the mandate period, we see fewer service offices, less local presence, and longer distances to state services. It is not the result of natural forces or agency decisions, but it is the result of political priorities from the Council of State and the SD government.

When we Social Democrats talk about holding Sweden together, it is about something concrete. It is about people being able to meet Försäkringskassan, Skatteverket, or Arbetsförmedlingen without having to travel for several hours. That is also why we Social Democrats want to go in a different direction, with more service offices, a stronger state presence, and a public activity that is close to people throughout Sweden.

Madam Speaker! In the election on September 13, people can choose a different path than the one that Minister Slottner has chosen. It is time to take Sweden seriously.

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Civilministern Erik Slottner (KD)

Madam Speaker! During the mandate period, some service offices have been closed, while some new ones have opened and more will open in the future. This autumn, Pajala, Övertorneå, Dorotea and Hällefors will receive new service offices, and more locations will also receive them through the mobile and flexible solutions being developed. The authority is doing this in a very good way. They are very happy to have received the assignment, I want to say.

We will therefore be able to offer a state presence through state service offices in even more locations – at times and in places where it is needed most and where it has not previously existed. It is also about developing the agency's way of working, and this government has done and contributed to that.

Then we can remind Peder Björk that his party has lost many voters around the country. In industrial towns where the Social Democrats were previously the strong party, voters have now moved away from the Social Democrats because they saw how he and his Government during the last mandate period tore Sweden apart. The disappointment was great. Many blood-red towns have now become bourgeois; people vote for the Tidö parties there. Many S-led administrations have become Tidö-led administrations around the country. People wanted something new because they saw how the previous government tore Sweden apart.

You saw our election promises regarding increased safety, lower fuel prices, and a forest policy and an agricultural policy that takes landowners and farmers seriously. We are fulfilling those now, and it has given life and strength to many parts of Sweden. The Vledda government did not manage to do that during the previous mandate period.

The interpellations debate was hereby concluded.

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