Dutch government resigns over child welfare fraud scandal

The Dutch government has resigned amid a scandal that saw thousands of families wrongly accused of child welfare fraud.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced the Cabinet's resignation saying that responsibility for the scandal "ultimately rests with the incumbent Cabinet and nowhere else."

Under the scandal, around 10,000 families in the Netherlands were told to repay tens of thousands of euros of subsidies after being wrongly accused of child welfare fraud.

Rutte made his speech in the aftermath of the publication of a report by the Parliamentary Interrogation Committee on Childcare Allowance, which he called "very tough, but fair."

The Dutch premier was clear that financial compensation for the affected parents is the first thing that needs to be properly arranged.

Elections for a new government will take place in mid-March.

Parents were branded fraudsters over minor errors such as missing signatures on paperwork, and erroneously forced to pay back tens of thousands of euros given by the government to offset the cost of childcare, with no means of redress. They were, as one junior minister who resigned in connection with the scandal put it, "steamrolled" by the system.

Families were left in a state of ruin, by a state apparatus that became the enemy of the people.

[Source: BBC / CNN]