Quality Assurance Act on the back burner: courtesy of the CDA or the Labour Party after all?

Yesterday, July 4, the Senate discussed the Quality Assurance bill in detail. Result: this bill is seriously delayed. The state of affairs now is that Minister Plasterk will amend or supplement the law. However, this amended law must first be passed again by the House of Representatives. In short, that does not make any progress.

This bill was controversial from the beginning. In particular, the proposal to broaden the contractor's liability was met with a lot of criticism from, among others, Bouwend Nederland. But also an organization such as Vereniging Eigen Huis was very critical. Nevertheless, the bill was passed by the House of Representatives after all.

In the Senate, things still went wrong. The CDA in particular was obstructive. Before you go thanking Senator Greetje de Vries of the CDA as an opponent of this bill, you should realize that the real cause of this failure may well lie with the PvdA.

During the debate in the Lower House, the PvdA proposed the necessary amendments (changes). In particular, the PvdA MP Albert de Vries was very active in this. Precisely those amendments and the confusion they caused were the reason for the CDA in the Senate not to agree to this bill.

And that criticism is also justified. Take, for example, the amendment modifying the contractor's (already existing) warning obligation for construction plan errors. That amendment would require the contractor to give a written, unambiguous warning. There is nothing against this in itself. However, in the explanation of this amendment, the PvdA seems to want to stretch the scope of the contractor's warning obligation. This would aggravate the contractor's liability, according to the CDA. The CDA, rightly, thought that was unreasonable.

Prior to the debate in the Senate, the CDA asked questions about this. However, Minister Plasterk's (also PvdA) answers were at odds with the PvdA's explanation of the amendment. Unclearness and confusion reign supreme, according to the CDA.

In short, in its urge to strengthen the position of the principal, among other things, the PvdA proposed amendments that only created ambiguity. That the CDA did not want to cooperate is understandable. That is also the role of the Senate. It must monitor the quality of legislation.

So opponents of the bill may have to thank the Labour Party. Without their amendments, it remains to be seen whether the CDA would have balked and the bill might have passed yesterday.

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