Former prime minister Mark Rutte has defended the nationwide curfew imposed during the coronavirus lockdown, insisting it was “unavoidable”.
Giving evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into the government’s pandemic response, Rutte said there was “no alternative” to the drastic measure, which was in force for three months until the end of 2021.
Earlier witnesses including Hubert Bruls, the chair of the group of regional safety boards that were responsible for enforcing the lockdown rules, questioned whether the curfew was effective and said the government had failed to explain why it was necessary.
Riots broke out in several towns and cities during protests against the curfew, while in a poll by RTL this year 35% of people named it as the “most severe” of all the pandemic restrictions.
But Rutte said the curfew and other unpopular measures, such as shutting the schools, were essential to keep infections down and stop the health service reaching the “code black” crisis point.
He also defended the decision to close schools for a third time in December 2021 as the delta variant spread from the UK, after the education minister in his cabinet, Arie Slob, earlier said he was against the shutdown.
Delta variant
“The Delta variant meant that we had to take lockdown measures from October and November,” Rutte said.
“Then the Omicron variant appeared and all we knew was that it was highly infections. If it had been as debilitating as the Delta variant, code black would have been inevitable.”
Rutte also said he clashed with health minister Hugo de Jonge over vaccination policy. He was willing to set an example as prime minister by taking the jab, but it should be a matter of individual choice, while De Jonge believed the government should press people to take responsibility.
Rutte added that strict rules such as curfews would not have been needed if everyone had stuck to the basic rules announced at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
“If everyone had said: I’ll keep to the one and a half metre rule, sneeze into my elbow, not shake hands and ventilate enough, then in theory we wouldn’t have had to take those measures,” he said.
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