Farm payment money may be late again

Environment secretary David Milliband admitted last year that not all the Single Farm Payment money due to farmers this year can be guaranteed to arrive by the due date of June 2007. We are told that £300 million has been budgeted for late payment fines.

I would be interested to hear from any farmers, especially in Copeland, who may be reading this about whether the money has reached you on time. I know that many local farmers had to borrow money last year because the payment was so late.

Meanwhile a report by an all-party committee of MPs has suggested that the previous Environment secretary (and current Foreign Secretary), Margaret Beckett, should have been sacked for incompetence over her failure to get to grips with the issue last year.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee of the House of Commons has just published a damning report into the failure of the Rural Payments Agency (RPE) and Department of the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to pay farmers their money on time. They said that heads should have rolled at the top for this incompetence.

Committee Chairman Michael Jack MP said that “A culture where ministers and senior officials can preside over failure of this magnitude and not be held personally accountable creates a serious risk of further failures in public service delivery.”

MPs accused Mrs Beckett of knowing what problems she faced but said that she took the “sublime hope it would be all right on the night”. The National Farmers’ Union President, Peter Kendall, added his voice to criticism said the NFU had warned the RPA and Defra the payment method was “over-complicated and over-bureaucratic”.He said: “It is truly terrible this saga has cost farmers about £20m of their money and untold stress.”

I am grateful to the Cumberland News for some of the information in this post.

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