In a case related to sickness allowance, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency is criticised for asking a question about violence that had no significance to the assessment of the case

Summary of the decision: The Swedish Social Insurance Agency has been given the government assignment of collaborating with certain other government agencies to improve the detection of certain forms of violence. The agency has chosen to implement the assignment by routinely asking questions about clients’ experiences of violence when processing certain types of cases.

As a result, when assessing a case related to sickness allowance, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency asked an individual whether he had perpetrated violence against anyone else or had himself been subjected to violence.

In the decision, the Parliamentary Ombudsman states that a public authority’s investigation of a case must be objective, implying that the questions asked when assessing the right to a given benefit must be relevant to the criteria for qualifying for that benefit. That a government agency has been given a specific government assignment does not alter this fact. The question about perpetrating and being subjected to violence asked in this case had no relevance to the investigation of the case and should not have been asked. The Parliamentary Ombudsman is especially critical that the individual was not informed of their right to refuse to answer the question of whether he had subjected someone else to violence, which was tantamount to asking if he had committed a criminal act.