07 September 2007
Inept handling of the single payment scheme of grants left farmers in a financially precarious position, the Commons Public Accounts Committee has said.
In a report published on September 6, the MPs criticised both the Rural Payments Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, adding that the taxpayer was left with a potential additional liability approaching £500m.
PAC chair Edward Leigh said the scheme's implementation last year 'to a near-impossible timetable, was a master class in bad decision-making, poor planning, incomplete testing of IT systems, confused lines of responsibility, scant objective management information and a failure by the management team to face up to the unfolding crisis'.
Defra and the agency, the report says, spent £122m implementing in England the European Union area-based single payment scheme, which replaced Common Agricultural Policy subsidies.
The aim was to pay 96% of the £1,515m owed to claimants by the end of March 2006. But the scale of the work needed was vastly underestimated, and only 15% of payments were made by March 31.
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