Single Payment Scheme

: I shall come to that point in a little while, but my noble Friend has already responded to that point. I was about to extend my sympathy—I am sure that hon. Members will join me in this—to the family of the constituent of the hon. Member for Ludlow, about whom he told the Chamber a terrible story. I also want to reassure the hon. Gentleman regarding the support being given to Rural Payments Agency staff. I have been involved only on the edges of this issue because it is not my area of responsibility, but one of the first questions that I asked when this blew into a major crisis two or three weeks ago was whether the RPA staff were feeling more demoralised. I urge hon. Members on both sides not to add to any possible demoralisation. The staff have done a fantastic job in difficult circumstances. As accusations and challenges have been made regarding my noble Friend in the other place, I remind hon. Members of the sequence of events that preceded the decision on Wednesday 15 March to remove Johnston McNeill, the chief executive of the Rural Payments Agency, from his post. Ministers had repeatedly been assured that it would be possible to implement the English model of the single farm payment scheme within the EU's payment window. As long ago as early 2005, the RPA announced that it would commence payments this February, and that 96 per cent. of payments would be made by the end of March. In mid to late January, the RPA advised that the 96 per cent. figure would not be achievable by the end of March due to ““unforeseen complexity”” in validating the claims, but that the worst case scenario was that the bulk of payments would be made by the end of March. On 20 February payments began to flow as had been forecast. However, on Friday 10 March, after fellow Ministers had requested a qualified update of actual payments being made, the RPA still advised that 51 per cent.—one could argue that that represented the bulk—would be made by 3 April and that 96 per cent. would be made by the end of June. Just four days after that, on Tuesday 14 March, at a meeting with the Secretary of State, the RPA chief executive reported for the first time that the forecast of the bulk of payments being made by the end of March would not be met. He reaffirmed that 96 per cent. of payments would be made by the end of June. The next day, on the advice of the DEFRA permanent secretary, Mr. McNeill was removed from his post.