Single Payment Scheme

I shall try be brief because the Minister has a large number of questions to answer. I know that he looks forward to doing his best. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on the excellent way in which she introduced what has been a sombre and serious debate—and a timely one. She set the tone by highlighting the long history of problems, of which many hon. Members were fully aware before the proverbial hit the fan earlier this month. One of the great mysteries of this issue is why the Government and Ministers appear to be unaware of problems about which hon. Members were fully aware because they were told about them many months ago by farmers in their constituencies. This has been a good debate with interesting contributions. The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) was critical of the hybrid scheme that the Government chose to adopt. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) said that he flagged up these issues many months ago, and talked about something going wrong in the culture of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He also raised the vital issue of the banks, which are yet again being prevailed upon to be tolerant. They are being tolerant, but there is a limit to the tolerance that we can continue to expect of commercial banks. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) made a moving contribution in which he spoke about a local farmer who has severe financial problems. There are such cases across the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) spoke about the tragic consequences that can occur as a result of financial hardship and other pressures on the farming industry. Ministers have recognised that this is a serious problem, but have not said what exactly the problem in the Rural Payments Agency is. We all know that there is a problem and are seeing the consequences of it, but it would help if the Minister told us precisely the nature of the problem; he owes that to the House. We have heard moving stories about the difficulties caused to the farming community, which has borne with enormous fortitude, over many years, the accumulating problems posed by declining farm incomes, the chill wind of globalisation, and the relentless pressure from supermarkets on one hand and increasing EU regulations on the other. This debacle illustrates the important point that there is a lack of even-handedness in the way in which the Government deal with the farming industry. Whenever a farmer makes a small mistake, the weight of authority comes down on them and they are penalised, but when the Government make a large mistake, they seem to go unpunished. The current situation is that the Government have made a serious mistake, the exact nature of which is unclear, but who is paying for it? The farmers, not the Government. That raises disquieting moral questions about how DEFRA has conducted its affairs for many years. Indeed, it goes back to before the creation of DEFRA, to the old culture of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.