Rural Payments Agency

My Lords, when this subject was debated in a Starred Question on, I think, 24 January, it was believed that some of the questioning was actually questioning the very substance of CAP reform. I say now on the record that we have always supported CAP reform. We have been very clear about that. I think that we really need to separate the two issues. Any criticisms which I may now level are certainly not about reform, which is welcome, but about its implementation. I too have found no answers in the Statement, but perhaps I did not expect to find any at this stage. If there had been anything more positive to say, the Government would have come forward with their own Statement rather than respond to a Question. However, a number of questions arise now. The first question for farmers who are in really desperate circumstances must continue to be whether the Minister has a more definite timetable in mind. In particular, in answer to a Written Question, it was said that claims would be processed randomly according to the order in which they came in. Has the position changed, and will they be processed in a more orderly way? Secondly, the RPA is responsible for nearly £3 billion of payments—£2.9 billion, I think—and it costs £249 million a year to run. Defra has an RPA ownership board and an RPA executive review group, both of which I believe are chaired by a senior Defra official and both of which I presume report regularly to Ministers. How was it that these groups did not spot the problem earlier? I have gone back through all the Written Questions and Answers and the problem clearly arose well before it became apparent to farmers that they were really going to suffer. I presume that the Government are maintaining their position on not paying interest because they do not feel that it is appropriate. I note their reason for saying that, which is that the payment window runs until 30 June. According to an Answer given to my honourable friend Dr Cable in another place, the number of people employed by the RPA decreased by almost 500 between March 2005 and February 2006. If the RPA was to undertake such enormous changes and it could have foreseen the amount of work that would result, why did it choose that time to cut staff, just when it was so busy? Did the number of RPA vacancies increase substantially during the period of the problem? In other words, how many vacancies is the RPA suffering from? Farmers are, of course, in the front line and are having enormous difficulties. Nevertheless, as we learnt from foot and mouth, what critically affects farmers also affects the whole of the wider rural economy. I think we will want to return to that in the debate on Thursday.