Report highlights payments errors

4:53pm Wednesday 16th July 2008

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A new parliamentary report has exposed continuing massive errors in the government’s handling of EU Single Farm Payments to farmers.

The report, by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, contains a list of 19 farmers – including one based near Ledbury in Herefordshire – who were paid more than £50,000 too much in 2006.

It also details that, over a two-year period, almost 20,000 farmers’ payments were calculated wrongly and that overpayments totalled more than £37 million.

While the money for the Single Farm Payment comes from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, it is distributed to the farming industry by the government’s Rural Payments Agency.

Herefordshire LibDem MEP and European agriculture spokesperson for England and Wales, Liz Lynne, has slammed the government’s poor handling of the subsidies.

She said: “This latest report highlights the breathtaking scale of the government’s incompetence in its handling of EU farm payments.

“It is likely we will now face substantial non-compliance fines from the European Commission, only adding to the misery.

“As Defra and the rural payments agency dither through, farmers continue to be placed under massive stress through delays in payments and a woeful lack of information about overpayments, as efforts to recover money cause financial uncertainty and hardship for many.”