Rural Payments Agency heads should roll for ‘catastrophic shambles’
The cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee, of which North Cornwall’s MP, Dan Rogerson, is a member, published a report today (Thursday) following its inquiry into the Rural Payments Agency and its administration of the Single Payments Scheme.
The report calls the introduction of the new EU scheme a “catastrophe” for farmers and a “serious and embarrassing failure for Defra and the Rural Payments Agency”.
Local Liberal Democrat MP, Dan Rogerson commented:
“It has been astonishing to listen to several evidence sessions which laid bare the Rural Payments Agency’s serious, sustained and systemic failure to deliver for farmers.
“All of Cornwall’s MPs have been inundated with pleas for help from farmers whose very livelihoods have been put in jeopardy by this catastrophic shambles.
“It is beyond doubt that the situation is all the worse for the complete vacuum of accountability at the top, in Defra, in the RPA, and at Ministerial level itself.
“Can it be right that those who have so clearly failed so many remain in post? Where is the justice in the huge payout given to the failed Chief Executive of the RPA and the significant promotion given to the former Secretary of State?
“How perverse that the person who has so botched the administration of payments from the European Union should go on to be Foreign Secretary.
“Farmers’ confidence in our entire system of government is at stake if no one will acknowledge their culpability for this calamity – and do the decent thing.”
