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UK to be fined £305 million for farm subsidy incompetence 21 Feb 2007
posted by Jack Thurston
It looks likely that the United Kingdom government has been fined as much as £305 million for its failings in implementing the new Single Payment Scheme of the Common Agricultural Policy. The news was quietly slipped out today in the Spring Supplementary Estimate 2006-07, which indicated that Defra would be drawing on the Treasury's emergency national reserve fund to pay the fines. The level of the fines - or 'disallowance' in EU jargon - is significantly higher than the £131 million that had been anticipated as the probable fine for the late payment of the Single Farm Payment Scheme in 2004-05. The amount set aside to pay the fines amounts to a full 20 per cent of the £1.5 billion paid out under the Single Farm Payment Scheme in the EU budget year 2004-05.
In a written statement to Parliament, junior Defra Minister Barry Gardiner explained there would be "a claim on the Reserve of £305,000,000 of non-cash programme resources to cover provision for disallowance arising from Common Agricultural Policy schemes, most notably the Single Payment Scheme."
Farmsubsidy.org's Jack Thurston said, "Defra was tempting fate by selecting the most complex of all the possible ways of implementing the new Single Farm Payment Scheme. The administrative failures that ensued meant farmers had to take out costly bank loans to tide themselves over until their subsidy cheques arrived, at an estimated cost of tens of millions of pounds. But this revelation shows that by far the biggest loser will be the UK taxpayer, who will foot the bill for these enormous fines. This just shows the huge administrative costs involved in the complex web of farm subsidy schemes that comprise Europe's €48.5 billion Common Agricultural Policy. The pressure applied by farmsubsidy.org is only now beginning to reveal where all this money goes."
For more on how this happened, read the official report on the saga by the National Audit Office.
I sympathise with those farmers who have received their single payment late or not at all, if they are complying with all the requirements. However, many of our local farmers are not complying and have no intention of complying. Unfortunately the inspection rate is very low and farmers are aware of this.
This is an interesting perspective and we have some data on cross compliance enforcement rates, courtesy of the kindly souls at BBC Radio 4's Farming Today programme. Here is what the Rural Payments Agency had to say on the issue as at October 2006:
"Cross compliance breaches resulting in reductions to Single Payment Scheme (SPS) payments to farmers in England
Just under 1,500 of the approximately 120,000 applications had a reduction applied as a result of not meeting one or more of the cross compliance conditions. Nearly 1,200 of these redutions were applied at the lowest rate (1%) allowed by the legislation, with over 90% the result of a failure to comply with the cattle identification requirements (particularly failure to report movement of animals, failure to return passports for dead animals).
These breaches came to light as a result of a mixture of full cross compliance inspections, stand-alone cattle identification and land eligibility inspections by RPA inspectors and from inspections carried out by the Environment Agency.
The monetary value of the reductions across the customer base will differ, as each customer will be in receipt of different amounts of SPS payment."
These seem rather low penalty figures, begging many questions. Either (1) most farmers are doing a brilliant job of meeting the new cross compliance environmental requirements, (2) the requirements are not very onerous, (3) there are not many inspections going on or (4) inspectors are turning a blind eye to breaches of cross compliance laws. I gather that the Institute for European Environment Policy are doing some work in this area, and I await the findings with interest.
all EU funds, subsidies, grants etc. must be totally transparent so that they may be examined by every EU taxpayer / citizen
the current CAP needs serious examination
An interesting point with regard to inspections in Ireland,
lobby groups are insisting on two weeks notice prior to an inspection,
if notice is given, it is not an "inspection", it is a "visit", and has no credibility,
this convinces me that non-compliance with regard to standards and rules is a significant issue.
£305 million to an organisation that has not had it's books verified and signed off by auditors for over 11 years??
I know absolutely nothing about farming, but after a decade of Blair I do know this government have been the worse in our history and Beckett who is responsible for this fiasco should be imprisoned. Or was she doing exactly what she had been told to do by here EU mafia masters by leading the proverbial lamb to the slaughter. Is this just another elaborate underhand EU money laundering scheme such as is the influx of EU immigrants, who eventually will take their earnings and run. I think the next inline for rich pickings will be the NHS currently run by someone seemingly even more incompetent than Beckett. Patricia Hewitt (its inconceivable that any one with a reasonable amount if intelligence could be as incompetent) who is gradually running the NHS into the ground to make it more economically viable for a German/French health business to take it over.
And beyond that the now split asunder, Home Office?
CAP, decoupled single farm payments, i.e. no production of food required to receive subsidies from European taxpayers, import restrictions, and export subsidies are some of the reasons why the majority of EU citizens are being ruled by agricultural lobby groups, food security is best achieved when we have free access to the world