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Rural Payments Agency

My Lords, does the noble Lord know that the extra payments made to hill farmers are dependent on the single farm payment in the first place? It is now lambing time for hill farmers, who are supposed to be buying supplementary food for their ewes so that they can cope with their lambs, but they are not able to because they cannot get credit from feed companies any more. Can the Minister say what will happen to Johnston McNeil? I must say that when I first heard that he had been appointed to the Rural Payments Agency, my heart sank because I had seen how he coped with the demise of our abattoirs. I had a lot to do with that issue at the time. Is he still on full salary? If so, for how much longer will that go on? Has he told the Secretary of State how much he knew about the disastrous state of the agency? Finally, a report in Private Eye stated that immediately after Mr McNeil left the agency the IT system crashed yet again, losing quantities of data. What data have been lost and what effect will that loss have on payments?