Rural Payments Agency

My Lords, I am grateful for the response from the noble Lords, Lord Dixon-Smith and Lord Livsey. I made absolutely clear that 2006 will be a difficult year, and the tone of the Statement indicates this, leaving aside what has happened in the past. I am interested in what has happened in the past from a technical viewpoint, but my main priority is the present and the future. That has been what David Miliband and I have concentrated on in the past few weeks. We will not be talking up 2006 because, as the Statement says, we are limited in what we can actually do. 2006 has already started and 2007 applications are only nine months away. We really must be careful about making fundamental changes to a system that has not delivered. To answer the specific questions, I am grateful for the welcome of the Statement on interest payments. There will never be enough done, but we do not know how much will be paid until 30 June, because we cannot measure them until then. Some days after that date we will know how much has been paid out. The Statement was made today for the reasons I explained. There were Defra Questions in the other place, but there was none on the single payment scheme. We wanted to update the House as soon as possible. I also welcome the response on the sugar payments. It was bad enough seeing what had happened, but major changes on sugar for 2006 had already been agreed. Paying them separately is an advantage to the sugar beet producers for this one year, because the money stays within the family. I will be more attuned to respond on the EU attitude to penalties after 30 June. There will be an opportunity to answer the question then because the House will still be sitting. We are moving heaven and earth to pay as much out as possible before then. I appreciate that the extension date of 15 June for applications for 2006 has already passed. The deadline was originally the middle of May, extended to 31 May. By 15 June we had received more than 4,000 applications which would have been subject to a penalty because they had missed the deadline of 31 May. We are grateful to the Commission for this, as some 4,000 farmers will now not be subject to the penalty. I was then asked whether any applications had come in since. Yes, the latest figure I had was some 60 plus, and they are still trickling in. I will use—with his permission, although it is in Hansard—the words of Farmer Dixon-Smith, that the best value-for-money job he ever did as a farmer was filling in the forms. Filling in forms means you get money. That is what I have tried to put across. It helps to sign the forms when you have filled them in. The number of forms we receive without a signature is frankly unbelievable, but it does happen. As I say, it is now a trickle so we do not expect many people to be subject to a penalty next year. I cannot be tied to exact figures, but we have received some 110,000 plus out of the 118,000 that were requested. That 110,000 includes the 4,000 that came in after 31 May but before 15 June. Of the 4,000 hill-farm payments that have not been made, priority is being given to making full or partial payments for the hill-farm allowance. The RPA set up a dedicated unit. That is the question I was asked, though I do not have the answer. The implication is that they cannot have the hill-farm allowance until the single payment is paid. That is one of the problems. Some of the 4,000 may have had a partial single payment but not the hill-farm allowance. Before I sit down later, having answered other questions, I will try to have a more specific answer. I do not know anything about any ombudsman’s inquiry but, given the scale of the letters that I keep signing to Members of the other place I would not be at all surprised if there had been applications to the ombudsman on the grounds of maladministration. I know of no payments made by hand. I regret that I did not see the story in the Farmers Guardian; I missed that; it was not drawn to my attention. We are trying to use the system to make the payments. It is true that we have said that, if push comes to shove at the end of next week, we will do what we can, possibly including bypassing the system. We are very reluctant to do that because that in itself will create problems closing down the 2005 computer framework. Nevertheless, there are other ways to do that if we cannot get the payments out. I understand that there are two more payment windows before next Friday, so we will have a better view of the position by the middle of next week, but we have put in hand processes to try to maximise the payments to farmers. I cannot be certain about the date of the 2006 payment. The first time that anyone will get a date from me about 2006 payments is when I know that the first one has been made. Given what happened earlier this year, we will be very reluctant to make promises, because we will not be believed. Therefore, we will under-promise and over-deliver. Either way, I have already had a complaint from some stakeholders that we did not tell them that 841 partial payments were to be made last week—I think that they were to hill farmers. Until the buttons were pressed, we were not certain that they had gone through the system, so we were not going to say, ““By the way, we expect to make those payments””, because we could not be certain. As I said, there are two more payment windows before 30 June and I cannot be certain how many will be covered. I know estimates of what may be covered but they are not promises that I can share with the House. Finally, it is worth mentioning again that our top priority is those owed more than €1,000. Of course, there is a considerable number of people who have not had a penny whose claim will deliver less than €1,000—about 12,000 of them. They cannot be a priority. I know that it is important for some of them; £600 or €1000 is a lot of money if your total income is only five grand. I understand that, but they are not the top priority; the top priority is those owed more than that—the last 2,000-plus who have not had a bean and whose claim is more than that. Some sums owed are very substantial—into six figures, I understand. That is our top priority.