RPA pays a heavy penalty

WHEN it comes to farming policy, and its implementation, the coalition's challenge is a simple one – to ensure that there is never a repeat of the bureaucratic ineptitude which has dogged the Rural Payments Agency for nearly a decade.

And, having repeatedly criticised the past government for its complacency, there is a simple way of judging whether this administration is more efficient than its predecessor. It must never find itself in a position of having to pay fines to the EU for missing deadlines on the payment of farm subsidies.

For, at a time when her department is losing one third of its budget due to the spending squeeze, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman must find it particularly galling that she's having to make out a 3.3m cheque to the EU because of payment delays between 2005-07 when she was in opposition.

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There is nothing that she can do about this. Despite the public's misgivings about the EU, these deadlines exist for a reason – and it is to ensure that all farmers receive their share of Common Agricultural Policy payments on time.

It should also be borne in mind that subsidies from Brussels outstrip the funding that is made available by Defra – another reason why the Government needs to raise its game.

Yet, in many respects, the Rural Payments Agency is a sample of everything that is wrong with the public sector. Costly to set up, it has committed blunder after blunder – despite numerous internal shake-ups and strategy reviews – and that it has had to pay out about 200m in financial penalties because it did not do its job properly. It's a familiar story.

Just think of the improvements that could have been undertaken to the countryside, or the flood defence schemes built, if the RPA's management had been up to the job from the outset

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Officials in Scotland and Wales managed to switch to the new system of subsidy payments with the minimum of fuss, so why did the English authorities make such a mess of this policy, and with such serious consequences for the farming fraternity?

This longstanding question still remains unanswered. But, rather than playing the political blame game, the challenge for Ministers is to ensure that they never repeat past mistakes. They have much to prove.