Rural Payments Agency

My Lords, that is for my noble friend Lord Inglewood, to decide. I cannot, as he is not here. The Minister will have to be patient and ask him himself. There were no speakers on the government Benches except for the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—whose contribution, raising his very relevant problems, was well worth having. If the Minister is saying that people speaking on behalf of other parts of the House—from the Cross Benches or Liberal Democrat Benches as well as the Conservative Benches—should not speak, my goodness, heaven help the farmers. The Minister has been ruffled before he came in, which is a shame as I hope that I will be helping him along his way. The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, referred to the figures achieved by other countries. I, too, would like to highlight three of them. If the Minister wishes to listen, he can. If not, it does not matter for I will continue anyway. The truth is that Sweden moved to a hybrid system and 90 per cent of its farmers were paid on 2 January, while Germany used a dynamic hybrid system and 80 per cent of its farmers had received theirs by December. In Denmark, where there is the other hybrid system, 98 per cent of farmers were paid to date. If those three countries can do it, it begs the question: why not this one? What have we set out to do that was not done in other countries? When the Minister comes to respond, perhaps he will tell us. Other noble Lords have highlighted specific areas. The noble Countess, Lady Mar, highlighted the management of this problem and the failure to resolve it. My noble friend Lord Plumb said, quite rightly, as others have done, that the frustration and delay involved in trying to contact the helpline—you would think that you would get an answer from a helpline—has been beyond belief. Common sense should have kicked in. Other noble Lords quite rightly highlighted the difficulty that the supply trade and other suppliers have. I support the call for an independent review. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, had a meeting with the industry yesterday in which they discussed where we are and where we are going, and I seek clarification on some issues. I shall not repeat what I said on Monday, but it still stands. I understand that numerous validation schemes had very small errors—indeed, some were tiny. It has been suggested that claims for less than two hectares or up to 3 per cent of the area, whichever is the lower, would be paid. Will the Minister confirm that? I understand that the agency will be paying the middle range of claimants. What does he define as the middle range? The centralisation of the mapping work has been returned to Reading. There is a move afoot for one person to be responsible for individual claims from farmers, which will ideally be linked up with a person at Reading. How will that be achieved? Many of these claims have been dealt with in other agency buildings around the country. Are the Government saying they will all be moved to Reading? How can there be mapping alongside one person at the same time and the same place? I understand that the contract work for the mapping will be recalled. Again, I would be grateful for clarification. I also understand that there may be a ban on RPA staff giving out their personal phone numbers to applicants so that they can get a quicker result to their inquiry. It is possible that some of the redundant quality checks will be set aside, which should free up extra staff. Can the Minister confirm that there will be a direct push on the conclusion of the mapping? How far has the agency got with its mapping exercise? How many of these outstanding claims—and our family farm is invalidated—are due to insufficient mapping detail? I would be grateful for clarification. I also understand that there is a problem with dual claims. Will he tell us more about that and how it can be overcome? It has been suggested by some noble Lords and by others outside that if this will take too long, historic payments which were originally due through the IACS claims should be paid first. On the whole they are already agreed, although under this new system there are still queries. It has also been suggested that the claims of people who were not entitled to payments before should wait until the others have been dealt with. One of the reasons for things going really wrong was, as noble Lords have suggested, that this country adopted a very complicated system. During a noble Lord’s speech, the Minister indicated that our party agreed to this. I remind him, as I have done before, that Hansard shows that I warned at the time of the difficulty of choosing different systems, even within the UK. I said that in Wales, Scotland and Ireland—particularly Wales and Scotland—it would be different, which could have repercussions. I also raised the question of competitiveness with our EU colleagues. These things have not happened by mistake but because a conscious decision was taken. I hope that the Minister, having listened again to the many issues that have been raised, will deal with them constructively and answer some of these pressing questions. I have not attacked him; I said what I said on Monday. He is indicating that my noble friend Lord King did attack him, and I think he was quite right so to do. I have not attacked the Minister; I have given him some concrete suggestions, and what I seek from him, for the good of everybody, are some concrete answers.