Health ministry officials continued to accept trips paid for by companies until September 2012, the NRC reported at the weekend.

For years, senior civil servants had accommodation and travel paid for by companies which they did business with, the paper said. For example, the ministry’s secretary general stayed for ‘days’ in the hotel Mas d’Artigny on the Côte d’Azur at the expense of IT group Unisys.

Last week, the board of the Dutch health regulator NZa resigned after revelations about foreign trips paid for by drugs companies.

New policy

Health minister Edith Schippers told parliament last week: ‘I am responsible for the rules which apply to the VWS [ministry]. If we take part in a trip, we pay for it ourselves.’

A spokesman for the minister told the NRC this weekend that until autumn 2012, if officials were invited to take part in a conference, the ministry’s guideline was that the company doing the inviting would pick up the bill.

‘Since the start of the new parliamentary year in September 2012, the VWS rule is that the ministry will pay for participation and accommodation,’ he said.