Rural Payments Agency

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord King for introducing this debate this afternoon. His timing is profoundly poignant. First, I declare an interest. My wife is a farmer—and a very much better farmer she is than I would ever be. Where I come from, which is on the edge of Exmoor, the sad fact is that, until the supermarkets are prepared to pay a fair price for beef, lamb and milk, the single payment will make the difference between profit and loss, and survival and extinction, and it will be what keeps the rural world going round. The disgraceful fiasco over the single payment is not only putting farmers’ businesses at risk; in the north of Devon alone, it is also damaging hundreds of other small businesses that supply feed, fertiliser, machinery and 101 other goods or services to the farming community. They have not been paid because, without the single payment, farmers do not have the means to pay them. That situation is nothing short of scandalous. The worst of it is that it was entirely predictable. The Government chose the most complicated model of single payments that it was possible to devise. They then asked the staff of the Rural Payments Agency to implement it at the same time as threatening large numbers of them with redundancy. Finally, they relied on assurances from people at the top of the RPA, whose record has been shown to be rather less successful at delivering projects on time than the constructors of the Wembley Stadium and rather less forthcoming in their communications than the old Soviet politburo. This is probably the most incompetent piece of government administration ever known in a government department. It certainly rivals that of foot-and-mouth disease. It is utterly deplorable. Humility still counts for an awful lot. Perhaps the word ““regret”” as used by the Minister could be changed to the simple words: ““We are very sorry. We got it wrong””. However, I suspect that, as happens all too often, the Government could not give a toss for the plight of the rural economy. One day, they will deeply regret that. In the mean time, farmers the length and breadth of the country are furious and fuming. The Minister may blame his advisers and his civil servants all he likes, but, in the final analysis, this mess is of the Government’s own making. Having cleared that up—as we hope he will very soon—as an honourable man, he should, as my noble friend Lord King said, seriously consider his future in that department.