– Anniken Huitfeldt should also give an assessment of the extent of the breach of professional integrity, says Audun Lysbakken to news. He is SV’s member of the control and constitution committee at the Storting. The committee is now well underway in surveying how competency cases have been and are being handled by the Støre and Solberg government. Ahead of an oral hearing this autumn, the committee is now sending a series of questions to Solberg, Huitfeldt and other ministers to clarify the facts in the case. The case can result in criticism or, in the worst case, distrust of sitting ministers. The Storting’s Control and Constitution Committee The Storting’s “watchdog”, which is responsible for monitoring that the government and administration implement the Storting’s decisions. The committee can also carry out its own investigations into the administration to check whether the government’s policy is in line with the Storting’s decisions and intentions. The committee has now decided to examine all the summer’s competency cases in a separate case in the autumn. Such an investigation could end with criticism of ministers or distrust. The control committee is currently chaired by Høyre’s Peter Frølich. Grunde Almeland is the case manager and thus leads the work on the competency cases. (Source: Stortinget/news) Neither Conservative leader Erna Solberg nor Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Ap) has so far given a complete overview of how many times the rules of competence have been broken as a result of the spouses’ share investments. But while Solberg has come up with some, but not exhaustive, examples, Huitfeldt has so far only stated that she “presumes” that she has been incompetent in several cases. – Impossible task In letters to both Solberg and Huitfeldt, the committee has requested a complete overview of decisions where disqualification has subsequently been discovered. After Huitfeldt answered the committee for the first time on 1 September, the Storting sent another letter. There, an “overview of all decisions the foreign minister has been involved in where she has been incompetent” was again requested. But such an overview would require a review of a significant amount of decisions, writes Huitfeldt in his latest reply to the committee, dated 25 September. – It will be an almost impossible task to identify all relevant decisions and their possible links to my husband’s individual transactions in shares, writes Huitfeldt in the letter. Erna Solberg is on the same topic in her reply to the Storting, although she mentions cases related to Norsk Hydro and the work on the oil tax package as examples of possible breaches of integrity. – It is very difficult to estimate how many cases I may have been incompetent in, writes Solberg. Elsewhere in the letter to the Storting, she claims that it will be “an almost insurmountable task to assess each individual decision with a view to clarifying its competence.” Want answers Both Solberg and Huitfeldt support an assessment made by the legal department in the Ministry of Justice. It simply states that decisions that the two have helped make in government are not invalid – even if they may have been incompetent. The reason is that both maintain that they were completely unaware of their spouses’ share transactions. “As long as I did not know which shares my husband owned, his ownership and my eventual disqualification could not have influenced my decisions either,” Huitfeldt writes about the legal department’s assessment in one of his responses to the Storting. In the control committee, there are several people who are not satisfied with the answers from Solberg and Huitfeldt. – Red would like both of them to be able to present a complete overview. Unfortunately, both Solberg and Huitfeldt believe that it is not possible. This means that those responsible themselves are not able to calculate the extent of their own incapacity, says Rødt’s Seher Aydar to news. She nevertheless believes that the two cases are somewhat different from each other, and claims that Solberg’s disqualification may have had consequences for whether the decisions made during her reign are valid. – This is a little different for Huitfeldt, in that it appears as if she was not familiar with which companies her husband bought shares in. The duty that both Solberg and Huitfeldt had to obtain an overview, however, stands, she says. QUESTION: SV’s Audun Lysbakken and Rødt’s Seher Aydar sit on the control committee at the Storting. Photo: Ole Berg-Rusten / NTB How to assess incapacity? The purpose of the competency rules is to ensure correct, impartial decisions. Assessment of incapacity according to section 6, subsection 2 of the Public Administration Act Does the case involve a particular advantage or disadvantage for you or someone you have a close personal connection with? What kind of advantage/disadvantage and how big is this? How likely is this advantage/disadvantage to occur? Incapacity means that a person cannot deal with a case because of their connection to the case or persons who could be affected by the outcome of the case. The incapacitated person can neither make a decision in the case, participate in the investigation nor participate in its assessment. Not invited When the control and constitutional committee at the Storting meets today at 2 p.m., it will be clarified who will be invited to the control hearing, which is planned for November. According to what news is informed, it is not likely that the husbands Ola Flem and Sindre Finnes will be called in now. It was VG who reported this first. In addition to nailing down the program for the hearing, the committee will probably gather on a number of new questions for several of those involved. Among the questions Rødt wants answers to is the extent to which Erna Solberg assessed her own integrity before she dealt with matters of importance to Hydro, as well as what she herself did to fulfill her duty to obtain important information related to her own integrity – also in relation to her husband. SV will also ask several questions in the case. – We have sent a number of proposals for questions to the committee. They are particularly about why a routine was not established for Solberg to be notified of changes in the share portfolio, and about impartiality when it comes to the companies she knew the family owned shares in, says Audun Lysbakken. No fixed limit In her answers to the press and to the Storting, Erna Solberg has highlighted the size of the individual investments of her husband Sindre Finnes as relevant for assessing whether the rules of competence have been broken or not. But there has never been a fixed limit for how large an ownership stake in a company must be in order to be significant for the assessment of competence, according to the Prime Minister’s office. The legal department in the Ministry of Justice has said in several statements that a specific assessment must be made in each case, where emphasis is placed on, among other things: The absolute value of the shareholding. The percentage share in the company. What kind of decision needs to be made. What kind and how strong an interest the company concerned has in the matter and What significance the decision might have for the person who assesses their competence. – It followed from the Handbook for political leadership until 2017 that it was a duty for government politicians to notify their own ministry of shares with a value of over NOK 50,000 in Norwegian companies or foreign companies with activities in Norway. In 2017, the limit for mandatory reporting was lowered to NOK 20,000, communications manager Anne Kristin Hjukse recently told news.
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Requires new answers from Huitfeldt and Solberg – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
