Ronald Kroeze on forty years of parliamentary inquiries

Recently, on Friday 29 May, there was a start to the hearings of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the approach to the coronavirus pandemic. Related to this, CPG director Ronald Kroeze appeared as a a guest on Spraakmakers on Radio 1. The inquiry is the most powerful information and control tool available to the House of Representatives. Kroeze discussed the task of the current committee and explained how the inquiry tool was rediscovered in the 1980s. Why then? And what does that say about the transformation of parliamentary democracy? He also discussed the ongoing CPG research into 'forty years of parliamentary inquiries'. Below, you can find a transcript of the conversation that Kroeze had with interviewer Carl-Johan de Zwart, partly based on listeners' questions.

De Zwart: “Why did this inquiry committee take so long to get off the ground?“

Kroeze: “A motion to set up an inquiry committee was indeed already passed back in 2021. Since then, there have been several elections, the fall of the government, committee members who were not re-elected, and discussions on the approach. Those are some of the reasons why it took so long.“

De Zwart: “Is that common, all that fuss beforehand, if you look at all those parliamentary inquiries over the past decades??

Kroeze: “There is always a preliminary process in which it has to be agreed exactly what is to be investigated. That is also subject to negotiation, and sometimes it leads to friction because different politicians and parties sometimes want to investigate different aspects. In this case, only chairman Daan de Kort remained after the last elections. So it certainly did take a bit longer.”

De Zwart: “That also has to do with political unrest and the turbulent political landscape. They have been a regular feature over the past forty years: 14 inquiries in over 40 years of time. If this is the most powerful tool available to the House of Representatives, one would almost conclude that the cabinets of recent decades have made a mess of things?”

Kroeze: “I don't see it that way. In the book ‘De herontdekking van de parlementaire enquête’ (The rediscovery of the parliamentary inquiry), which I published last year, I describe why the inquiry has been rediscovered. It has existed since the Thorbecke's famous constitutional amendment in 1848. The House of Representatives gained this power then; it was used a handful of times then but not for a long time afterwards. What are the reasons that it came back into the picture in the decades after the Second World War? The government was expanding enormously, the welfare state was being built up, so the government was taking care of more and more areas. The House of Representatives has been asking itself: how can we still keep control of this? The House acts as a check on the government; that is one of its most important tasks. In the United States, the Watergate scandal was very important; an affair that was investigated with public hearings by a senate committee. Such public hearings were not allowed in the Netherlands according to the old inquiry law, but that law changed in 1977. A new feature was that government ministers could also be questioned under oath and that the hearings would be public. This combination of expanding government tasks and the amended inquiry law meant that, when a major scandal arose, this right was exercised. One example is the funding of Rijn-Schelde-Verolme (RSV); that company received hundreds of millions in government subsidies in 1970s, yet still went bankrupt in 1983. Parliament then asked: how could this have happened? We have that investigative tool of inquiry and we are going to use it.”

Ronald Kroeze was then also asked what the CPG is currently focusing on within the project 'forty years of parliamentary inquiries'.

Kroeze: “The inquiry has been rediscovered - how can one make sense of that? Why is this tool being used? You can see that, since the RSV inquiry, the inquiry has proven popular as a tool for unearthing information and exercising control after the event. Often, political consequences are drawn from it as well. A fourth function is learning lessons. It is interesting to see which function is prioritised. This committee, the one investigating the approach to the coronavirus pandemic, is strongly focused on learning lessons. Many people consider that important. We must realise, however, that the parliamentary inquiry takes place in a political context, so political dynamics will always play a role.“

Listener: “Do parliamentary inquiries still serve a purpose? The lessons are quickly forgotten, for instance as with the inquiry into the gas extraction in Groningen. People want to reopen the gas wells.”

Kroeze: “Parliamentary inquires are certainly effective. The extent of their influence may vary, but if you look at RSV, for example, it led to a change in state aid policy; the construction fraud around 2000 led to changes in competition policy. And in the IRT affair, too, limits were placed on the police's investigative powers. I agree with the questioner that such an inquiry does take a lot of time. It is a heavy-handed measure and requires lengthy preliminary investigation. If you then draw certain conclusions after such a long investigation and start tinkering with them again fairly soon afterwards, that would be strange. Especially when you look at another function of such an inquiry: restoring faith. If an inquiry is started to restore trust, you must not leave any ambiguity regarding the question 'wat are we going to do with the findings?', as this could backfire.“

Listener: “Doesn't an inquiry like this also contribute to the current polarisation?”

Kroeze: “A valid question. Looking back: the 1950s and 1960s were the years of the pillar society, characterised by authority and respect for public officers; journalists who addressed ministers as "Your Excellency". Those days are long gone; they have swung too far in the other direction. The inquiry tool has become a part of this. At first, it was potentially a catalyst for a somewhat more critical view from parliament and society towards leaders and the government; now the question sometimes arises: has it gone too far? And we have that fragmented political landscape. At the same time, this is part of a democracy; conflicts are, in principle, part of it.”

De Zwart: “But do parliamentary inquiries put relations on edge?”

Kroeze: “An inquiry takes place in a politcal context, so that is possible. If you expose decisions about which there is uncertainty, you can both increase or decrease mistrust. With COVID, for instance, you see that much decision-making occured under pressure, often with the best intentions, but that the precise considerations were sometimes not shared publicly. This also became clear with RSV; there were ideas behind the decisions to grant state aid on several occasions to this company in difficulty: to revitalise it, to save jobs. An inquiry can help to gain more insight into this: 'how does such a decision-making process work and how can we improve it in the future?'. What we also often see with inquiries, also at RSV, is that people say: 'gee, what we're seeing now is actually very serious'. I've also done reserach into that. At RSV, for example, you saw letters to the editor stating that the inquiry had revealed 'it's even worse than I thought'. That is also a possible effect of an inquiry. But in my view, you shouldn't then say: let's stop conducting research because of the potential risk.”

De Zwart: “Is it important to know what the exact research assignment of such an inquiry committee is? As in, what will we research and why?”

Kroeze: “Yes, as I said, the current committee is strongly focused on learning lessons and wants to move away from only exposing mistakes and attaching political consequences to them - the 'day of reckoning' approach. That has also been the case for previous inquiries. Following the RSV in 1983, there was also enormous pressure on Minister Van Aardenne of Economic Affairs, who had been responsible for the RSV support policy. The inquiry concluded that he had misled the House of Representatives and had left out information. A debate arose with the question 'should this minister not go?'. He barely managed to stay on, but the RSV affair has caused the tool of the inquiry to be linked to the idea that if serious conclusions are drawn, there must actually be political consequences. Of course, you can aim for that to a greater or lesser extent. We'll have to wait and see how it plays out this time.”

De Zwart: “Have any cabinets fallen as a result of parliamentary inquiries? The Kok II cabinet fell after Srebrenica, but it resigned following the NIOD investigation. The inquiry only came afterwards.”

Kroeze: “On a number of occasions, individual ministers have resigned. The parliamentary investigation into the benefits scandal, which preceded the inquiry, was a catalyst for the fall of the third Rutte cabinet. It is certainly a powerful weapon.”

Questioner: “Gideo van Meijeren is said to have left the committee because he was not allowed to ask his own questions. Which questions are not allowed to be asked, and are the questions that are asked standardised? And what about the independence of such a committee?”

Kroeze: “The tension lies in the fact that the House of Representatives, by a majority and sometimes even unanimously, agrees to the proposal that an inquiry should be held. There is broad support for this. Then, a committee is set up to further elaborate the scope of the inquiry. The inquiry is then also defined. Matters that have already been investigated elsewhere or are the subject of criminal investigation - such as the face mask affair, in this case - fall outside of the committee's scope. So, there are always limitations. It is, however, inherent to the process to say: we are going to do this as a team. You have to find some common ground. That, too, is political. This committee has drawn up a protocol covering matters such as what we will adhere to and what we will focus on.”

Questioner: “To what extent is the effectiveness of such a committee important? Is the fact that it can take so long taken into account?”

Kroeze: “This committee says it genuinely wants to learn from the coronavirus crisis and be better prepared for such a crisis rather than just looking back.”

'More than ever, the Coronavirus inquiry aims to focus on learning lessons': Ronald Kroeze on forty years of parliamentary inquiries

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