TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe admitted that the irregular statistics scandal involving the labor ministry’s Monthly Labor Survey “can be naturally taken as a ‘cover-up’ from a general point of view,” during a House of Councillors Budget Committee session on March 5.
The prime minister, however, defended a reinvestigation report released on Feb. 27 by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s special inspection commission, which concluded that the ministry did not systematically cover up the statistics irregularities. “I take it (the report) as having been organized with a strict definition from a legal point of view,” Abe told the upper house budget panel.
The reinvestigation report pointed out that the ministry “made false statements that were not based on facts” but concluded that “it cannot be recognized that there was a cover-up.” Regarding the definition of the term “cover-up,” Yoshio Higuchi, chairman of the special inspection commission, told the upper chamber budget panel, “We defined (the term) with the participation of legal experts. I find no sense of discomfort in the way the term is used (in the report).”
It was revealed earlier that improper data collection spanning 15 years for the Monthly Labor Survey — used to calculate a host of work-related benefits including employment insurance payouts — had resulted in tens of billions of yen in benefit shortfalls affecting tens of millions of people.
Regarding the reason for the ministry switching the labor survey’s statistics collection method from a complete survey to an irregular sampling survey, the reinvestigation report stated that the ministry “gave consideration to requests from prefectural governments to reduce their burdens” in collecting data from local businesses.
Higuchi, however, revealed that the investigation panel could not confirm that there were such requests when it interviewed officials in charge at the prefectural governments in Tokyo and neighboring Kanagawa, Aichi in central Japan and Osaka to the west.
Nevertheless, Higuchi justified the reinvestigation report, commenting, “It has been confirmed from past documents and interviews with labor ministry staff that ‘there were such requests.'”
Higuchi’s statements came in response to questions posed by Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), and Renho, secretary-general of the CDP’s upper house caucus.
Akira Koike, head of the secretariat of the Japanese Communist Party, raised questions about Higuchi’s neutrality as chairman of the investigative panel.
Prime Minister Abe refuted the suspicion, saying, “I didn’t appoint him because he may deal with the matter leniently.”
Source:The Mainichi
(Japanese original by Yusuke Matsukura and Tetsuya Kageyama, Political News Department)
