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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I thank hon. Members for their kind words of welcome to me in my new post. It is a privilege to have it, and I approach it enthusiastically. I look forward to the challenges ahead. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) said that I was Lord Rooker’s spokesman on earth, but given the impression that we heard from the Chairman of the Select Committee, perhaps he was trying to be my noble Friend’s spokesman on earth. It was a good impression and those of us who know my noble Friend well realise that he would have enjoyed it. First, let me deal with the report on the Rural Payments Agency and the implementation of the single payment scheme. Sadly, I need to begin by apologising for the delay in responding to the Select Committee’s report. The Government’s response was sent on Friday, but although Committee members may have had a chance to read it, I appreciate that other hon. Members will not. Of course, it has not been published yet. The problem, given the issues that the Committee’s report outlined and that were discussed extensively this evening, is that they simply were not departmental matters, as the Chairman said. It was necessary to secure advice from elsewhere in Whitehall. Although that is not an excuse for breaching the normal convention of responding in two months, I hope that hon. Members appreciate that recent ministerial and machinery of government changes have diverted the attention of those responsible for the past couple of months. However, let me consider the substance of the report. I have come fresh to its contents and it is clear that it is a thorough piece of work—I genuinely thank Committee members for their evident efforts in producing it. It reflects the feeling of the farming and rural community about the failures of the Rural Payments Agency and the single payment scheme and the effect on farmers throughout the land. I cannot pretend that the report made pleasant reading. Along with the National Audit Office report, which I read in preparation for the debate, it makes clear the scale and nature of the problems that the delays in implementing the scheme caused to individual farmers and the rural community generally. I am grateful to the NFU president, Peter Kendall, who arranged for me to speak to some farmers who were affected by the scheme. I understood from them exactly what those delays meant, especially the cash flow problems that they caused. I therefore add my apologies to those of other Ministers involved for the distress that has been caused by that failure. Clearly, lessons need to be learned. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) did not want me to say that, but I must say that it is true. We set out in the Government response some of the lessons, which a wider review of DEFRA’s governance structures and its delivery bodies has taken up. The agency has taken others forward in the way in which it processes claims and communicates with its customers. In particular, the change from task working to whole-case working means that a claimant now has a named official who is responsible for their claim. A number of hon. Members raised that issue. A farmer could make a claim that could be dealt with by any number of people and in any number of the five different offices. That was simply unacceptable and a recipe for chaos.