A cross-party group of lawmakers met on the 4th to discuss revising the rules on car ownership for people receiving welfare, after hearing an explanation from the health ministry. The group, the Parliamentary League for Promoting Measures against Child Poverty, will keep hearing from the ministry and is also considering compiling its own recommendations.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is working to clarify the requirements. At the meeting it reported that it is moving toward allowing a car where a single parent has a preschool child, or is in a comparable situation, and meets certain conditions such as needing a vehicle to commute or to take the child to school. Cars were already permitted in some cases under the current system, but the problem, critics have said, is that judgments vary from one municipality to another.
Lawmakers at the meeting went beyond the single-parent case. One said a car should be allowed when a child needs special medical treatment or care. Others argued for a vehicle as a means of getting around, pointing to the thinning of public transport in rural areas.
"Clarifying the standard, not loosening it"
After the meeting, Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Takako Suzuki said the problem with the current system had been that "a large part was left to the individual discretion of municipalities and caseworkers." The point of the revision, she said, is that it is "not simply a loosening of the requirements but the writing down and clarifying of the standard."
In areas with well-developed public transport, such as Tokyo's 23 wards, car ownership is expected to remain unpermitted. Suzuki said there was a string of calls for the ministry to properly explain these facts.