A benefits scandal sinks the Dutch government

EVERY COUNTRY’SEUVVD welfare state is a reflection of its soul. Take the Netherlands, an egalitarian country but also a deeply Calvinist and bureaucratic one. Dutch benefits are generous. Income inequality is among the lowest in the . But benefits are subject to complicated rules meant to exclude the undeserving. These can run amok. Over the past decade, systems meant to snoop out abuse of child-care benefits wrongly labelled more than 20,000 parents as fraudsters and drove many into penury. On January 15th Mark Rutte, the prime minister, and his cabinet resigned over the scandal. It may herald a modest shift to the left in Dutch social policy.Child care in the Netherlands is private, but the tax authority gives parents subsidies to pay the fees, depending on income. After Mr Rutte and his centre-right Liberal () party took office in 2010, laws to fight benefit fraud were repeatedly sharpened, especially in 2013 after Bulgarian scammers were discovered collecting payments. The tax authority was given new powers to hunt cheats and encouraged to cover the cost with funds it seized.