Sven Aspling

Sven Aspling (1912–2000) was a Swedish politician of the Swedish Social Democratic Party who served as its party secretary from 1948 to 1962 and as Minister for Health and Social Affairs from 20 September 1962 to 8 October 1976. He was born in Filipstad in Värmland in 1912, the son of the locomotive driver Anders Gustaf Persson and Alida Eulalia Aspling. Aftonbladet reported on 9 February 2000 that the former minister had died the previous Sunday at his home in Sundbyberg.

His own account of his early working life, filed with the Riksdag, lists a year as a sawmill worker in Filipstad in 1926–1927, a decade as an errand boy and later a laboratory assistant at a local pharmacy, and journalism at Värmlands Folkblad from 1937 to 1942, including a term in 1939 at the Nordic Folk High School in Geneva. He was ombudsman for the party’s Dalarna district from 1942 to 1946, based in Falun, and organizational secretary at the party board from 1946 to 1948.

As party secretary he followed Sven Andersson and was followed by Sten Andersson, in the period when Tage Erlander led the party, and he remained on the party board and its executive committee until 1975. He sat in the Riksdag from 1956 to 1985. In 1962 he succeeded Torsten Nilsson as minister and head of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, and he kept that post through the rest of Erlander’s premiership and the first premiership of Olof Palme, until the change of government in 1976.

On 8 March 1963 Aspling countersigned a bill proposing a new Holiday Act in place of the statute then in force. A bill decided on 13 March 1975, signed by Palme and Aspling, set out a flexible pension age to take effect with the lowering of the general pension age to 65 on 1 July 1976, including earlier or deferred drawing of the pension and a new partial-pension insurance for people who cut their working hours. The news agency dispatch published after his death described him as the politician behind a run of reforms from the right to four weeks’ holiday to partial pension, which was later wound down.

Early life

Family and childhood in Filipstad

Sven Gustav Aspling was born on 28 August 1912 in Filipstad, in the province of Värmland, Sweden. The birth register of Filipstad parish enters him as Sven Gustaf, born out of wedlock, and names the father as Anders Gustaf Persson, a locomotive fireman from Norrbro, born on 15 October 1880, and the mother as Alida Eulalia Aspling, from Asker, born on 19 April 1880. Published biographies give him his mother's surname, Aspling, rather than Persson. In Vem är det and in the curriculum he later gave the Riksdag for Fakta om folkvalda, the father is an engine driver, Gustaf or Anders Gustaf Persson, and the mother is Alida Aspling.

Those accounts do not record brothers or sisters, a home address, or any secondary school. The first employment he listed began in 1926, the year he turned fourteen. By about 1920 the Swedish folkskola had been organized as a single six-year elementary school, and a later Riksdag decision to make that school seven years long was not carried through until 1949.

Work at the sawmill and the pharmacy

The same Riksdag curriculum places his years before journalism in wage work in Filipstad. He was a sawmill worker there in 1926–1927. From 1927 to 1937 he was first an errand boy and later a laboratory assistant at the town pharmacy. The pharmacy years are the longest early employment in his own list. From 1937 that list puts him on the staff of the newspaper Värmlands Folkblad, the post he held in the year he went abroad to study.

The Nordic Folk High School in Geneva

In 1939 Aspling attended the Nordic Folk High School in Geneva (Nordiska folkhögskolan i Genève, also called Genèveskolan). An association of Nordic popular-education organizations, founded in 1930–31, ran courses on international questions in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, so that students did not need a foreign language. It was a travelling folk high school rather than a settled campus, intended to put workers and other non-academic students in touch with Geneva instead of leaving that contact to officials already familiar with the League of Nations.

After early disputes between those officials and the workers' educational associations, the school was reorganized in the mid-1930s under the associations and received public funds from the social-democratic governments of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The course then had four parts: preparatory study in Scandinavia, including time at a folk high school there; travel through contemporary Europe; weeks in Geneva timed to overlap the conference of the International Labour Organization; and a closing stay at the abbey in Pontigny, the meeting place of the French philosopher Paul Desjardins. In Geneva the school's teachers took the general classes, League and ILO officials lectured on their own subjects, and students followed the labour conference from the press gallery. Among the early teachers was the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal. Research on these interwar courses covers 1931–1939 and puts the number of Nordic students over the decade at about three hundred. Aspling's submission to Fakta om folkvalda records only that he attended in 1939, not the teaching, the journey, or anyone he met.

Journalism and the labour movement

Värmlands Folkblad

In 1937 Aspling left pharmacy work in Filipstad for the labour press. The biography he later supplied to the Riksdag for Fakta om folkvalda states that from 1937 to 1942 he was local editor in Filipstad for Värmlands Folkblad and was employed at the paper’s central editorial office in Karlstad. Nationalencyklopedin dates his journalism on the paper to 1937–42 and says that he thereafter gave himself entirely to organizational political work. A TT news report of his death, published in Aftonbladet on 9 February 2000, described the same years as his time as local editor in Filipstad and placed his move to a party post in 1942.

Värmlands Folkblad was the Social Democratic paper for Värmland. A note held by Värmlands Museum, taken from a 1939 local description edited by B. Wendel, records that it was founded in Karlstad in 1918 as a mouthpiece for Social Democratic politics. An earlier paper of the same name had closed after the general strike of 1909. From 1936 it appeared daily, and its first editor was the head teacher Nils Helger. A profile in Svensk Tidskrift at the end of 1958, signed G. U., mentioned the journalism only in passing: Aspling had contributed to Värmlands Folkblad “for a time,” but had made his name as an ombudsman.

The youth league, ABF and the Filipstad workers' commune

The Riksdag biography is the source for the voluntary offices that ran beside the newspaper work. Aspling sat on the board of the Värmland county district of the Social Democratic Youth League (Sveriges socialdemokratiska ungdomsförbund, SSU) from 1940 to 1942, as study leader in 1940–41 and as district chairman in 1941–42. The league, the party’s youth organization, dates its present founding to a congress in Stockholm on 28 October 1917.

The same biography lists him as chairman of the board of Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund (ABF) in Filipstad and as secretary of the board of the Filipstad workers’ commune (arbetarekommun), without years for either post. ABF was founded on 16 November 1912, on the initiative of the Social Democrat and educator Rickard Sandler, by the party, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and Kooperativa Förbundet, to coordinate study circles, lectures and libraries already growing in the labour movement. In the party’s own account of its structure, the associations in a municipality meet in a workers’ commune, which settles local policy and elects the municipal party board; the communes form party districts, in most cases one to a county.

Ombudsman in Dalarna

In 1942 he left the paper for a district post. The Riksdag biography records him as ombudsman for the Social Democratic party district in Dalarna from 1942 to 1946. The 2000 TT report said he came to Falun that year as party ombudsman. The 1958 profile said he earned his spurs in Dalarna’s Social Democratic district and was taken from there, just after the war, onto the staff of the national party board.

An English-language profile of his son Anders Aspling, introducing an interview on management education, states that during the Second World War Sven Aspling “played the role of ombudsman in the transfer of Nordic refugees.” The profile does not describe that work, and neither the Riksdag biography nor the 2000 news report mentions refugees.

Organizational secretary

In 1946 the party board appointed him organizational secretary (organisationssekreterare), a staff post he held until 1948. On the party’s published list the party secretary, ultimately responsible for the central office (the partiexpedition), was Sven Andersson in 1945–48 and Aspling from 1948. The 1958 profile said the task in 1948 was to find a successor to Andersson, and that Aspling moved up to party secretary about ten years before the article appeared.

Party secretary

Appointment and the central organization

In 1948 Sven Aspling became party secretary (partisekreterare) of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. The party’s list of office-holders records Sven Andersson in the post from 1945 to 1948, Aspling from 1948 to 1962 and Sten Andersson from 1962 to 1982; it describes the party secretary as ultimately responsible for all activity at the party office, and dates Tage Erlander’s chairmanship to 1946–1969. The Riksdag biography, drawn from information Aspling supplied to Fakta om folkvalda, records that he was organizational secretary at the party executive from 1946 to 1948 and, from 1948 to 1975, a member of the party board and its executive committee, the verkställande utskottet.

The secretariat did not control local nominations. At a party-board meeting on 18 January 1958 Aspling said lists should balance the sexes and that women’s representation lagged, but that the board could not decree the lists: under the statutes each workers’ commune decided its own. Circulars to districts and communes had, he said, stressed that the question be taken seriously. Gunnel Karlsson’s dissertation on the Social Democratic women’s federation, which quotes those minutes, notes that the party was also working to recruit white-collar employees, including through a white-collar council, and that women in that group were especially hard to win.

Elections and membership

In Riksdag elections while he was secretary—Statistics Sweden’s series treats Riksdag elections through 1968 as second-chamber elections—the party’s share of valid votes was 46.1 percent in 1948 (turnout 82.7 percent), 46.1 percent in 1952 (79.1 percent), 44.6 percent in 1956 (79.8 percent), 46.2 percent on 1 June 1958 (77.4 percent) and 47.8 percent in 1960 (85.9 percent). The 1958 contest was an extraordinary election to the second chamber, the only such parliamentary election in Sweden after the democratic breakthrough of the early 1920s, and the Riksdag states that the issue was the general supplementary pension, ATP.

Registered membership rose over the same years. Figures in Karlsson’s study, taken from party annual reports and including members exempt from dues and pensioners, give 722,073 members in 1950, 770,140 in 1955 and 801,068 in 1960, of whom 215,314 (26.9 percent) were women. A membership inventory of 31 December 1948, cited there from Inga Thorsson’s papers, counted 638,512 members, 480,913 men and 157,599 women; of the women, about 91,000 were collectively affiliated through trade unions and about 65,000 were individual members.

Aktuellt i Politiken and the labour press

In 1953 Aspling founded the magazine Aktuellt i Politik och Samhälle, later Aktuellt i Politiken, issued 20 times a year as a political magazine. The same Riksdag biography lists board seats held with the secretariat: Arbetarpressens förlags AB from 1949 to 1962, Tidens Förlag from 1949 to 1963, and the Are companies together with the magazine Folket i Bild from 1949 to 1963. From 1958 to 1962 he also sat on the board of Scandinavian Airlines.

Cold War contacts

The early years of the secretariat overlapped Cold War planning for resistance if the Soviet Union occupied Sweden. William Colby, later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote that in 1951 he was sent to open a Stockholm representation for the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, loosely attached to a station already there, under cover as a junior political attaché. He arrived in early April 1951. The assignment was to develop “stay-behind” nets in Scandinavia—leadership, training and equipment prepared before any occupation—but he would not say which arrangement belonged to which country. He was not the station chief: the officer already in Stockholm was the senior CIA representative and was later named chief when the two components were merged.

In the same memoir Colby wrote that he sought out “interesting political figures in Swedish life, such as the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party,” to strengthen that cover, and that the contacts “were strictly along diplomatic lines and had no CIA connotations.” He did not name the official. Aspling was party secretary throughout the posting.

Swedish inquiries have treated an American-initiated effort and a Swedish organization as parallel. The 2002 security-policy inquiry, summarizing the Neutrality Policy Commission, reported that Colby’s memoirs described stay-behind nets in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden; that accounts differed on how large his Swedish net was; and that activity begun on American initiative appeared to have ended around 1960. The commission’s picture rested largely on oral evidence; written records, if they existed, were not found. From at least the early 1950s, the inquiry wrote, there was also the nucleus of a Swedish resistance organization linked to the trade-union movement, business and the armed forces and run entirely by Swedes. In 1958 it was placed under state control, financing shifted from business contributions to tax revenue, and one or more ministers regularly attended its leadership meetings. Contacts with American and British officials were, on the commission’s reading, mainly about material aid if Sweden were occupied and about links to a national leadership that might have to remain abroad; apart from some radio equipment, few if any operational measures were found.

A later account dates the Swedish organization earlier and places it outside CIA control. An Axess review of political scientist Johan Wennström’s Sveriges sak var vår (2025) reports that in the summer of 1949 Erlander issued four handwritten authorizations to plan a resistance movement “intended to come into operation if any part of the country were occupied by a foreign power,” later called Operation Metro, whose leadership grew to six, and that a secret council decision of 1955, signed by King Gustaf VI Adolf and classified until 2005, gave the work a legal basis. Wennström’s conclusion, as summarized there and in Dagens Nyheter, is that NATO and the CIA promoted stay-behind groups elsewhere in Western Europe, while Sweden’s network was Swedish-led and decided inside the Swedish state, built by a few ministers, generals, directors and trade-union leaders. He has said the organization was heavily mythologized and that he could not establish what became of it after 1995.

Parliamentary career

The First Chamber

Sven Aspling took his seat in the indirectly elected First Chamber of the Riksdag on 10 January 1956. The chamber recorded that the party secretary, Sven Aspling of Stockholm, had been chosen to succeed Sundvik as member for Kopparbergs län, the county covering present-day Dalarna, and the same sitting elected him a deputy of the Committee on the Constitution and of the Banking Committee (bankoutskottet). County and city councils chose the members for eight-year terms, and a member need not live in the constituency; his biography gives Sundbyberg as his home. The autumn 1956 register still lists him for Kopparberg, as party secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. From 1960 through the registers of 1964, 1968 and 1970 he is listed for Gothenburg (Göteborgs stad), on a mandate noted as expiring in 1966 and then in 1974, and from 1964 as statsråd in Sundbyberg.

Committees before 1976

The biography compiled for Fakta om folkvalda records him as a deputy on the Committee on the Constitution in 1956–62, a deputy on the Banking Committee in 1956–69 and a full member of it in 1960–62, and a deputy on the Committee on Foreign Affairs from the autumn session of 1958 until 1962. The constitutional committee examines ministers' conduct in office and the handling of government business. The Banking Committee's instruction required a review of the board and administration of the Riksbank and the National Debt Office. The foreign-affairs committee prepared relations and agreements with other states and international organisations where no other committee was responsible; the chamber elected him to its deputy list on 10 January 1958.

He was minister and head of the Ministry of Social Affairs from 20 September 1962 until 8 October 1976, and the ordinary committee posts other than the banking deputyship end in 1962. He was a deputy of the War Delegation (krigsdelegationen) in 1965–68; on 15 January 1969 the First Chamber elected him one of its 25 members, and the 1970 register still lists him as such. That delegation can replace the Riksdag if Sweden is at war or in danger of war. Under the 1974 Instrument of Government a substitute exercised the seat of a member who was Speaker or in the government, though Aspling still spoke as minister: on 29 May 1975 the floor went to "herr socialministern Aspling".

The unicameral Riksdag and the Social Insurance Committee

The two chambers were then replaced by one. On 20 September 1970, 350 members were elected directly for three-year terms, 310 in fixed constituency seats and 40 adjustment seats, and from 1971 the Riksdag had a single chamber. It met on 11 January 1971, opened by Tage Erlander as the longest-serving member. For Värmland County, Aspling is entered first among the Social Democrats, titled socialminister, and that directly elected seat is the constituency on his biography.

From the 1976/77 session through 1984/85, after leaving the cabinet, he was a member and the chair of the Social Insurance Committee (socialförsäkringsutskottet) and a member of the Speaker's Conference (talmanskonferensen); the War Delegation seat continued through 1984/85. The 1974 Riksdag Act gave the Social Insurance Committee general social insurance, occupational-injury insurance and study support. Reports went to the chamber over the chair's signature. On 3 May 1978 he signed a recommendation to reject sickness-insurance pay for privately given psychotherapy. On 29 November 1977 he led the Social Democrats' dissent from the committee majority, supporting a call by Olof Palme and others to raise the folkpension contribution by half a percentage point. In April 1977 he and others had moved against higher patient charges in a government bill on sickness-insurance compensation. In January 1978 a motion in his name sought a statement on the partial pension, available since 1 July 1976 when an employee aged 60 to 65 shortened working hours. With the other Värmland Social Democrats he also signed county motions, including one in 1977/78 on employment in Värmland.

Minister of Social Affairs

Appointment in 1962

Sven Aspling became Sweden's minister for social affairs — the office called socialminister — in the reshuffle that followed the resignation of Foreign Minister Östen Undén. Svenska Dagbladets årsbok for 1962 records that Undén left on 19 September and was succeeded by Torsten Nilsson, until then socialminister, and that the new socialminister was the party secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, a member of the Riksdag's First Chamber since 1956. Sten Andersson succeeded Aspling as party secretary. The Riksdag biography, taken from the member's own entry in Fakta om folkvalda, gives the formal title and dates as statsråd och chef för Socialdepartementet from 20 September 1962. Sveriges statskalender for 1970 records Nilsson as head of Socialdepartementet, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, from 1957 to 1962. The same September changes moved labour-market and housing questions from the social ministry to the Interior Ministry, which in return transferred health and medical care to Socialdepartementet.

The ministry under Erlander and Palme

Aspling remained head of the ministry through the rest of Prime Minister Tage Erlander's time in office, which ended on 14 October 1969, and then under Olof Palme, prime minister from that date until 8 October 1976. The 1970 state calendar lists him as chef för Socialdepartementet from 1962 and as continuing when Palme's government was formed in 1969. His Riksdag entry carries the tenure on to 8 October 1976.

In 1970 the ministry was at Mynttorget 2 in Stockholm, and its subject heads covered social insurance, social welfare, health and medical care, and disability care and rehabilitation — the field that took in holiday rules, sickness and parental benefits, pension age and partial retirement, outpatient charges, dental insurance and the preparation of social-services law. The state secretary was Karl Göte Fridh, whose appointment the calendar dates to 1969. Bodies placed under the ministry included Socialstyrelsen, Riksförsäkringsverket, the general insurance funds and the state hospitals. From the turn of 1966–67, Camilla Odhnoff served as konsultativt statsråd, a minister without portfolio, for family, youth and immigration; the 1970 calendar still lists her in that rank from 1967, and she left the cabinet when Palme formed a new ministry after the 1973 election.

The 1976 change of government

In the 1976 Riksdag election the Social Democrats remained the largest party, with 42.7 percent of the valid votes in Statistics Sweden's historical series. The Centre Party received 24.1 percent, the Moderate Party 15.6 percent and Folkpartiet 11.1 percent — a combined 50.8 percent in that one-decimal series — while Vänsterpartiet kommunisterna, later the Left Party, received 4.8 percent. The Centre Party, Folkpartiet and the Moderates agreed to form a government. On 8 October 1976 Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin told the Riksdag that, under the Instrument of Government, he was reporting the ministers he had appointed, and named the Centre Party member Rune Gustavsson as statsråd och chef för socialdepartementet. Palme's premiership and Aspling's term both ended that day. Gustavsson's Riksdag biography dates his own tenure in the post from 8 October 1976 to 18 October 1978.

Social insurance, pensions and working time

The Holiday Act of 1963

On 8 March 1963 King Gustaf VI Adolf and Minister for Social Affairs Sven Aspling signed, at Stockholm Palace, a bill replacing the Holiday Act of 1945. Drawn from the 1960 holiday committee's report, SOU 1962:44, it lengthened statutory leave from three weeks to four. Earning began on 1 July 1963, when the act was to take effect, with at most three and a half weeks in 1964 and four in 1965. Eight days' work in a month earned one day's leave and fifteen earned two, and hourly, piece-rate and commission pay carried holiday pay of 9 per cent.

Aspling called the fourth week an economic choice, not a health measure: more leisure left less room for other gains, though legislation should still set a minimum standard. Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen and other private employers doubted the room in the economy, wanted a further inquiry, and argued that leave, like wages, belonged in bargaining; several asked that the extra week not be earned until 1964. Second Law Committee members likened it to a wage rise of nearly 3 per cent during current agreements, but did not support delay to 1 January 1964.

Sickness, parental and related benefits

The bills amended an older structure. Gustav Möller, social minister from the 1920s until 1951, is associated with the folkpension, child allowances and compulsory sickness insurance. The general sickness insurance was carried through in 1955. The earnings-related supplement, ATP, followed a referendum on 13 October 1957 and a Riksdag decision on 14 May 1959, and took effect on 1 January 1960.

Aspling's bill of 1 April 1966 revised cash sickness benefit in the 1962 National Insurance Act from 1 January 1967. Waiting days ended: benefit normally began the day after falling ill, and a spell of up to six further days included at most two non-working days. Class amounts rose by 1 to 6 kronor, average compensation from about 65 per cent to just over 80 per cent, and the basic benefit for women insured as housewives from 5 to 6 kronor. The annual cost, just over 770 million kronor, was to come mainly from contributions, with the employer rate rising from 1.5 to 2.6 per cent.

A bill signed by Gustaf Adolf and Aspling on 9 March 1973 made sickness benefit taxable and pensionable for ATP, replaced the classes with a qualifying income, and set compensation at 90 per cent of that income up to 7.5 base amounts, then 54,700 kronor, from 1 January 1974. Higher benefits were estimated to raise 1974 costs by about 2,700 million kronor, and the employer rate was to move from 3.2 to 3.8 per cent.

Parental leave pay was in a companion bill signed the same day by Camilla Odhnoff, minister for family policy, not by Aspling. From 1 January 1974 maternity insurance was to become parental insurance: 25 kronor a day for six months, or sickness benefit if higher, for the parent mainly caring for the child, taxable and therefore ATP-earning, plus benefit when a parent cared for a sick child or a father cared for older children at a later birth. The package, based on SOU 1972:34, was costed at about 275 million kronor a year. Försäkringskassan has described the scheme as the first general parental insurance open to both parents; in 1974 mothers used 99.5 per cent of the days. On 18 January 1974 Aspling and King Carl XVI Gustaf signed a bill extending birth-related benefit from six months to seven from 1 January 1975.

Pension age, flexible retirement and partial pension

On 7 June 1974 Aspling and Carl XVI Gustaf proposed higher folkpension benefits and a general pension age of 65 instead of 67 from 1 July 1976, following SOU 1974:15, while leaving flexible retirement for a later bill so that occupational schemes could be renegotiated. For 1975–1977 the cost was put at about 3,150 million kronor, about 1,775 million for the lower age and about 1,375 million for the other folkpension changes, financed by higher social-insurance and ATP contributions.

Prime Minister Olof Palme and Aspling signed the flexible-retirement bill on 13 March 1975. From SOU 1975:10, and with effect on 1 July 1976, it offered three choices between 60 and 70: disability pension on medical or labour-market grounds at the full old-age level; early or deferred old-age pension, full or half; and partial pension with part-time work. Early pension was cut permanently by 0.5 per cent a month before 65, and deferred pension raised by 0.6 per cent a month up to 70. Partial pension, after ten years of ATP income after 45 and work in five of the previous twelve months, replaced 65 per cent of earnings lost when hours fell by at least five a week but stayed at 17 or more, without cutting the pension at 65. Disposable income was put at 85–90 per cent of full-time pay, at a cost in the first years of about 400 million kronor from an employer charge of 0.25 per cent (0.125 in 1976).

The social-insurance committee's report carried reservations. Centre Party members called the 0.5 per cent factor an improvement, but said someone turning 67 on 1 July 1976 with a maximum early pension would still lose 24 per cent rather than 28.8, and asked for a review. Moderate members wanted the part-time rule and its lower limit on hours dropped, and objected to limiting the ten-year test to employment income.

Health care and social services

Outpatient care and the seven-krona reform

On 17 October 1969, while Aspling headed the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the government laid proposition 1969:125 before the Riksdag. For outpatient care by a public principal the patient was to pay a flat 7 kronor for a surgery visit, or 15 kronor for a home visit, and the sickness insurance was to pay the principal 31 kronor a visit. The fee covered referred X-ray and laboratory tests, instead of repayment of three-quarters of a sum paid to the doctor. About 250 million kronor a year in extra cost was to come mainly from raising employers’ sickness-insurance contribution from 2.6 to 2.9 per cent. The scheme was to start on 1 January 1970.

Public providers then gave nearly three-quarters of outpatient visits. Section 29 of the Health Care Act (1962:242) was amended so that staff could not take a personal fee from a patient treated in the service, which ended private surgeries on hospital premises. Private practitioners were left to a separate inquiry ordered on 9 May 1969. The Swedish Medical Association and the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations (SACO) wanted the memorandum thoroughly revised, fearing a shift in demand and a higher charge for the cheapest visits. Aspling said a uniform fee made that unavoidable. The Second Law Committee (report no. 80, 1969) recommended adoption. Moderate members Rolf Kaijser and Ingrid Wetterström wanted the fee rules delayed to 1 July 1970 and private practice on hospital premises allowed by agreement. On 3 December 1969 the Second Chamber rejected those reservations by 175 votes to 34 and 179 to 34, and the First Chamber by 102 to 22 and 97 to 27.

Dental insurance and hospital care

The same bill raised the general-ward daily charge, usually 5 kronor, to 10 kronor from 1 January 1970, paid by the sickness insurance for insured patients. For old-age pensioners, hospital reimbursement could run for 365 days after pensioning, instead of a combined ceiling of 180 days. County councils already had, under the 1962 Act, to arrange outpatient and inpatient care for residents of their district; the reform put public outpatient practice on the same direct insurance payment as the hospitals.

Proposition 1973:45, given at Stockholm Palace on 9 March 1973 and countersigned by Aspling, proposed a general dental insurance inside the national sickness insurance from 1 January 1974, and a build-up of the county councils’ public dental service. A Public Dental Care Act would require county councils, and municipalities outside a county council, to give free public dental care through age 19 and to provide specialist care, with other adult care only to an appropriate extent. Insurance payments were to finance the expansion without raising the councils’ net cost. It covered everyone insured over 19 and, at first, ages 17 to 19, in the public service, at dental faculties and with private dentists. Patient and insurance normally paid half each, and the insurance 75 per cent of any excess over 1,000 kronor in one course of treatment. A government fee schedule could be undercut but not exceeded. The funds’ cost for 1974 was put at a minimum of 650 million kronor.

The Social Insurance Committee (report no. 20, 1973) recommended adoption. Moderate members Ringaby and Andersson in Ljung opposed fixing the public service’s share of adult care in advance and steering new dentists into public posts. Centre Party members called automatic listing of private dentists a compulsion and wanted the patient’s share reviewed, because the new schedule would exceed the old public tariff. Folkpartiet and Moderate members noted that the Swedish Dental Association had said voluntary affiliation could reach about 90 per cent.

Social research and the path toward the Social Services Act

Aspling chaired the cooperation committee for social research from 1969 to 1975. He convened it in April 1969 to join administration and research on social-policy questions, and chaired all sixteen meetings. Members included the directors-general of the National Social Insurance Board, the National Board of Health and Welfare and Statistics Sweden. Reports Ds S 1973:1 and Ds S 1973:8 followed a 2 million kronor reserve in the 1970 budget and led to a delegation for social research in July 1974.

On 8 December 1967 Aspling gave directives for an overhaul of the temperance-care, social-assistance and child-welfare acts. Authorizations of that day and of 15 March 1968 let him appoint the experts. The commission, Socialutredningen, chaired by county governor Thure Andersson, delivered Socialvården: mål och medel (SOU 1974:39) in June 1974. The Social Services Act was not passed while he was minister. Bill 1979/80:1, decided on 28 June 1979 by the Ullsten cabinet and signed by Ola Ullsten and Gabriel Romanus, proposed one social services act in place of those statutes and the child-care act. Aspling had left the ministry on 8 October 1976.

Erlander, Palme and the evening of 28 February 1986

The inner circle around Erlander

Sven Aspling was party secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1948 to 1962, and sat on its executive and working committee until 1975. From 20 September 1962 to 8 October 1976 he was minister for health and social affairs, under Tage Erlander, prime minister from 1946 to 1969, and then through Olof Palme's first government.

A 1958 profile in the conservative review Svensk Tidskrift said that he stood personally very close to the prime minister, who needed him on organizational business. In 1999 Hjalmarson & Högberg published Med Erlander och Palme, his account as told to the radio journalist Arvid Lagercrantz. Its published description says he came to belong to Social Democracy's inner circle and that the talks give interiors of party life.

Interviewed at home on 7 April 1986 by criminal inspectors Lars Hammar and Leif Bokström, Aspling said he had known Palme since the early 1950s, that Palme was drawn closer to Erlander in September and October 1953, and that in 1957 he had helped bring Palme into the Riksdag through Jönköping by having him placed in an electable position on the county list. A memorial he signed for Värmlands Folkblad, printed on 15 March 1986 under the masthead VF and attached to that interview, dated the closeness from the day in 1953 when Palme first entered the party office on Sveavägen, and spoke of thirty years of cooperation in the party, the Riksdag and the government.

Friendship with Palme

The same interview said the families had grown close partly by spending Easters together: in the 1950s and 1960s at Dombås, by Hovran, in Gudbrandsdalen in Norway, and in the 1970s at Idre fjäll in Dalarna, with another stay at Idre planned for 1986. A telephone note from the month before said they had shared Easter for many years and that, from 1970–71, the Easters with the Palmes were at Idre fjäll.

His son Björn, interviewed in 2011, said that Palme, fifteen years younger, used his father as one of the older generation with whom he tested ideas. Björn recalled two or three Norwegian Easters in the 1960s, then adjacent cabins at Idre Fjäll from 1971 to 1985, with most evenings apart because Lisbeth Palme wanted the week free of calls. The March memorial said the tie had included days with the children in the Norwegian and Swedish mountains, and that the 28 February call had been about that year's planned Easter week there.

The telephone call and the police interview

Palme telephoned Aspling that evening. In spaningsuppslag Z8084:1, Hammar noted that Aspling had asked, through a person whose name is blacked out, to have the call recorded. The form heading is dated 6 March 1986; the text says he was reached at 14:45 on 7 March, and the April interview refers to telephone information given on 6 March.

The March note says Palme rang at about 20:20–20:25. They spoke in general terms of Alva Myrdal's funeral, party politics and the stock market. At about 20:35 Palme said Lisbeth was standing there with her clothes on and that they were going to the cinema, and the call soon ended. Aspling reported it because the line might have been intercepted, so that an unknown listener would have learned that Palme was going to the cinema. No cinema or film is named in the note.

On 24 March 1987 Alf Andersson interviewed him again from 11:00. Aspling said the families had stood very close, in an entirely irreproachable friendship. Palme had called at about 20:30 because he had missed Aspling at Myrdal's funeral and heard that angina had kept him at home. Such evening calls, Aspling said, usually concerned politics, events in the movement, opinion figures and the stock market; this one, as he remembered it, also took up Easter at Idre. Palme stopped because Lisbeth was waiting, and his last words were that they would go to the cinema. Aspling was fairly sure that neither cinema nor film was named. He was certain of no further call that evening, and said he went to bed at about 21:30.

Björn Aspling later recalled his father being told that Lisbeth was calling from the hall and that they were going to the cinema with their son Mårten Palme and Mårten's girlfriend, a detail absent from the 1986 note and the 1987 interview. Later that night Palme was killed in the assassination on Sveavägen in Stockholm. The Swedish Police place the shots at 23:21, after Palme, Lisbeth, their son and the son's girlfriend had been to the cinema and the couple had walked along Sveavägen.

Writings, honours and final years

Books on social policy and party history

The Riksdag biography, drawn from what Aspling supplied to Fakta om folkvalda, lists three titles: Socialpolitiken – trygghetspolitiken (1971), Trygghetspolitiken byggs ut (1973) and 100 år i Sverige. Vägen till folkhemmet (first edition 1988). Libris records the first two as short non-fiction pamphlets in the numbered series Informationshäfte, printed by Sjuhäradsbygdens tryckeri in Borås.

Socialpolitiken – trygghetspolitiken, series number 1971:7, is 24 pages and is classed Oh-c. Trygghetspolitiken byggs ut (1973:2) is 40 illustrated pages, with the drawings credited to Claes Folkeson, in the same class. Those records name the printer rather than a publisher. Another 1971 number in the series, Olof Palme's speech Våra närmaste arbetsuppgifter, is catalogued as issued by the Social Democrats.

100 år i Sverige: vägen till folkhemmet was published by Tiden in Stockholm in 1988 and printed by Kristianstads boktryckeri, in 126 pages with illustrations and tables. Libris indexes it under the labour movement, social conditions and Swedish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — the span indicated by the subtitle's reference to the folkhemmet. The 1988 record notes a printing dated 1989, and a third edition of 1992 has 135 pages.

In 1999 Hjalmarson & Högberg published Med Erlander och Palme: Sven Aspling berättar för Arvid Lagercrantz, a first edition running from page 9 to page 186, with 16 plates. The catalogue treats it as autobiography and biography and as Swedish history after 1945, and names Lagercrantz (born 1942) together with Aspling. The subtitle presents the book as Aspling's account, given in interview, of his years with Tage Erlander and Palme. It is not among the titles on the Riksdag list.

Illis quorum and other recognition

In 1987 the government awarded Aspling Illis quorum meruere labores of the 18th size, listed as "Iq 18, 87". In the chronological appendix for that size he is entered as a former cabinet minister, with the ground "Mångåriga och betydelsefulla insatser på skilda områden inom svenskt samhällsliv" and the responsible office given as SB, the Prime Minister's Office. The same memorandum, SB PM 2006:1, states that the medal was instituted in 1785, that the 18th size is worn around the neck on a gold chain, and that it is used for personal contributions of national importance in cultural, scientific and other public-benefit fields — not for work done merely by holding a public office. The 1997 Vem är det records the decoration as "Iqml 18 87" and names no other honour.

Family, death and burial

Aspling married in 1947 Britt Westling, born in 1917, daughter of the vicar Walter Westling and Svea, née Bursell. The 1997 handbook gives her the title farm. kand. — the abbreviation for farmacie kandidat, the first examination at the Pharmaceutical Institute — and records that she died in 1990. It does not name any children.

The 2001 edition's list of deaths records "Aspling Sven statsråd 000206", 6 February 2000. Born on 28 August 1912, he was 87. Dagens Nyheter carried a family-page notice, "Dödsfall: Sven Aspling", on 10 February 2000. Vem är det for 1997 still gave Stockholm as his residence; the Riksdag biography gives Sundbyberg. A search of the Stockholm cemetery authority's grave index returns no burial record for Sven Gustav Aspling.