Rewards for failure scandal

The sum involved – about 2m over three years – may be relatively modest at face value, but it is the principle that counts. For, in case anyone has forgotten, here is a brief resum of the agency's failings.

Nearly a decade after its inception, tens of thousands of farmers continue to receive woefully inaccurate subsidy payments. Some have been paid too much. Others, meanwhile, are out of pocket. Either way, they cannot claim compensation for the inconvenience.

The bureaucratic blundering does not end here. It was the RPA – for the record – which lost the personal bank details of 100,000 farmers last year.

The systemic mismanagement at this agency has cost taxpayers more than 600m as a result of poor administration, according to the National Audit Office. Just think how many dairy farms could have been saved with this money.

And, while the RPA has, miraculously, paid 78 per cent farmers on time this month and hit its performance target for the first time, this, nevertheless, means that one-quarter of farms are still waiting for their subsidies to be settled.

These difficulties, and others, only exist in England where this agency has jurisdiction. They have not occurred in other parts of Britain, or on mainland Europe.

Yet the inevitable sense of injustice felt by farmers, on learning about the extent of bonus payments, does not end here.

While the fortunate staff concerned are considering how to spend their new-found wealth, farmers – some of whom earn as little as 10,000 a year – are counting the cost of the big freeze, and the crops that have been ruined. The juxtaposition could not be greater.

As such, it raises serious questions about who authorised the bonus payments – and who agreed that they were justifiable in spite of the RPA's ongoing failures.

For, in the present financial climate, bonuses should only be paid to those who successfully implement agreed savings rather than to those whose negligent decision-making has already cost taxpayers so much money – and impacted upon the viability of so many farms.