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Rural Payments Agency

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for allowing us sight of it beforehand. The NAO report on the single payment scheme states in part 4: "““The single payment scheme has cost more to implement than expected and many of the financial savings forecast are unlikely to materialise””." That is a damning criticism of what has happened. I do not blame the Minister personally for that. A lotof hard work was done by staff to try to rescue this failing scheme. But I note in an Answer in theother place today to our Treasury spokesman that £2.9 million was paid in bonuses to Defra staff last year. I trust that they are not in the employ of the RPA, otherwise they must think that they have won the lottery. I note, as the noble Baroness said, that according to the Statement, 110,244 farmers have received the full payment but, like her, I note that 4,756, had received only a partial payment. I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer this question now, but I should like him to investigate. There are several hundred farmers on the Welsh border whose main holding is in Wales but who have land in England. Many of them have received no payment at all and yet on the land they occupy in Wales, they were paid in December 2005. They are still waiting for the payment in England in November 2006, but have had nothing. There is a big problem there which I ask the Minister to expedite. There is a reference to hill farm allowance payments, where the Statement reads: "““Similarly, on hill farm allowance payments, some 95 per cent of claimants have received a full or partial payment””." I regard that statement as pure spin, because we do not know what is the breakdown between those who have had a full payment and those who have had only a partial payment. What percentage of those farmers remain to receive top-up payments? During the past fortnight, it was mentioned that some applications had been rejected. Have they been resubmitted? What is the situation there on those hill farms? There is a lot of hardship among livestock farmers as a resultof that. The Minister admitted, via his chief executive, that the RPA would be unstable for a considerable time. At least there has now been a reality check about the situation. Given the shambles that has occurred, the basic policy elicited in the Statement—that full payment will be made where possible in future and partial payments where necessary—is a move forward, but it is the best of a very bad job. The situation is ironic when many of us were advocating partial payment, way back—I am talking about more than 12 months ago. In the early part of next year, I note that partial payments will start in mid-February, which is still late when you think that payments in Scotland and Wales will have been made in December this year, next month. Even then, less than 50 per cent of the claim will be paid during that window of opportunity. The statement that the Government are confident that partial payments can be made does not inspire confidence in me or, I am sure, many farmers. A staged approach, although very necessary in the situation, is really a back marker. What part has Accenture, the IT consultant, played in all that? The same company is involved in the IT shambles in the NHS contract, where a £12.4 billion cost has been incurred but there is not as yet any delivery of that system. In this case, the contract costs have nearly doubled to £50.3 million, as the NAO report says. Indeed, the total overspend of the implementation is £46.5 million. This is serious money, which farmers would have really appreciated if it had ended up in their hard work. Farming, as the Minister knows, is a relentless occupation. Every penny is hard-earned. One can judge that a different scheme in England, possibly an in-house payment scheme, would have been a far better solution. The NAO report concludes in part 5: "““Better management of the risks could have reduced the disruption experienced””." Surely the problems in this scheme should have been apparent in 2004-05. There are many lessons for the future, and it is clear that a greater hands-on approach by Ministers and senior civil servants would have ferreted out these problems at the time and made it clear that a contingency plan needed to be formed, as it became more and more apparent that the scheme would fail in the future. It was obvious that this was going to happen, but unfortunately Ministers were not told the truth. The story has been one of negligence.