Parents duped in the Supplementary Affair often could not obtain the subsidized legal aid to which they were often entitled. This is the conclusion of the Scientific Research and Documentation Center (WODC) of the Ministry of Justice and Security on Monday based on our own research. As a result, some parents faced the tax authorities alone, without a lawyer, or decided not to initiate any proceedings at all.
People on a low income can apply for a subsidy for a lawyer, on which the Legal Aid Board will then make a decision. Many of the benefit parents who submitted such an application received a refusal on the doormat, because it was assumed that they were ‘self-reliant’. According to the WODC, this was a flaw in the system: the assessments allegedly failed to take sufficient account of the fact that parents may not be self-reliant at all and overlooked how complex some matters were.
“The fact that the provision of subsidized legal assistance in childcare allowance cases did not go well was not noticed in time,” the researchers write. “The conclusion is that the system of subsidized legal aid has functioned insufficiently during the childcare allowance affair.” The government also allegedly failed to monitor the state of affairs. The WODC advises the government to quickly repair the bottlenecks within the current system and advocates wider access to subsidized legal assistance.
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