This news almost slipped through unnoticed, but not quite.
While the government pleads poverty over compensation for pensioners, it 
appears that it could be fined up to £305 million for its shambolic handling of subsidies paid to our farmers, which caused much hardship and devastation for many of them.
Farmsubsidy.org reports how this news was quietly slipped out yesterday in the Spring Supplementary Estimate 2006-07, which indicated that Defra would be drawing on the Treasury’s emergency national reserve fund to pay the fines.
The fine is more than double the £131 million that had been anticipated as the probable fine for the late payment of the Single Farm Payment Scheme in 2004-05. The amount set aside to pay the fines amounts to a full 20 per cent of the £1.5 billion paid out under the Single Farm Payment Scheme in the EU budget year 2004-05. This is taxpayers’ money that is being lost because of government’s incompetence.
Thankfully, it did not escape the attention of Jack Thurston, a former political adviser to Nick Brown, the UK Minister for Agriculture Fisheries and Food (1998-2001) who has been a Senior Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Centre in London since 2002. He noticed that in a written statement to Parliament, junior Defra Minister Barry Gardiner explained there would be “a claim on the Reserve of £305,000,000 of non-cash programme resources to cover provision for disallowance arising from Common Agricultural Policy schemes, most notably the Single Payment Scheme.”
Jack said: “Defra was tempting fate by selecting the most complex of all the possible ways of implementing the new Single Farm Payment Scheme. The administrative failures that ensued meant farmers had to take out costly bank loans to tide themselves over until their subsidy cheques arrived, at an estimated cost of tens of millions of pounds.
“But this revelation shows that by far the biggest loser will be the UK taxpayer, who will foot the bill for these enormous fines. This just shows the huge administrative costs involved in the complex web of farm subsidy schemes that comprise Europe’s €48.5 billion Common Agricultural Policy. The pressure applied by farmsubsidy.org is only now beginning to reveal where all this money goes.”
I’m not totally sure if the government has already been fined £305 million and is making provision to pay it, or whether it is preparing itself for its worst case scenario, which could be £305 million. In Jack’s own words:
“It looks likely that the United Kingdom government has been fined as much as £305 million for its failings in implementing the new Single Payment Scheme of the Common Agricultural Policy.”
Meanwhile, despite such a major catastrophe, Margaret Beckett gets promoted, though little is heard of her as Foreign Secretary. I hope she makes a statement and is held to account for this exorbitant fine; our farmers and taxpayers deserve an explanation. Anyone running a business would be fired if their leadership had caused such an almighty fiasco, but instead Beckett gets promoted. Jack has included this report if she needs reminding about the many failings about the subsidy payment.
I have a FOI question before it is too late, how much has the government been fined in the last 10 years for its inefficiency? What has this government cost the taxpayer? How else could that money have been put to good use?
Thanks to EU-Serf for the hat tip.
Ellee – when we’ve been expressing concern about whether people power can exert pressure on the government and the threat to the FOI act, it is important to highlight the power of new media to highlight stories such as this that would otherwise possibly slip through. Thanks to the way in which news can be transmitted through connections online and to offline, let’s hope those in power learn that the people – large and small, individual and collective – are watching and expecting better.
You are on MAGINIFICENT form Ellee.Two fabulous posts today. I will have to mull it over later but I wanted you to know you are appreciated.
Really tremnendous work
Newmania, the credit goes to Jack Thurston for picking it up and I have merely followed it through from EU-Serf’s link. I appreciate the appreciation!
Just spotted this mention of it in today’s Yorkshire Post.
http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=2071539
Thank you for this, Ellee. Living in a rural area we meet people who are hit by this.
The taxpayer foots the bill for incompetence again.
It’s one of those ‘bad news’ features the government hope will get buried without anyone noticing it.
This just shows the huge administrative costs involved in the complex web of farm subsidy schemes that comprise Europe’s €48.5 billion Common Agricultural Policy.
I read this earlier at Euroserf and it is simply iniquitous. The CAP is being used to bash recalcitrant Brits about the head because of their crime of demanding the abomination of farm subsidies cease and because they had the temerity to be 78% against the EU constitution.
The sooner Britain gets out the better.
Ellee – thanks for this story. What a massive amount of money, and what’s more worrying is that they don’t seem to be concerned – does this mean there are even more unpaid bills / fines? Michelle
I don’t understand farm subsidies and all that – I only know what I hear on “The Archers”, I’m afraid- but I do know that MB made a mess of it. I was glad when she was appointed FS, if only because she was an older woman with bad hair and I felt empathy. I also remembered that she was, for a brief period, leader after John Smith’s death and I felt she was unfortunate then as everything was stacked against her image-wise: she was called Margaret, for a start, and it wasn’t that long after the demise of the Thatcher regime and, in those days, she even looked a bit like Thatcher. So there was no way she was going to win a leadership election. But, with the FS job, she was only being rewarded for her unstinting loyalty to Blair; it wasn’t a job awarded to her because of her ability. And now she is so clearly out of her depth that it makes me ashamed. Recently she was featured in a BBC World documentary entitled “A Day in the Life of…” Her unsureness showed through there, too. She really should make a statment as you say, Ellee.
Welshcakes, you have lovely hair, please never put yourself down and compare yourself to Margaret Beckett.
Evening Ellee,
This is dynamite!
You seem to get this info far quicker than others…Do you and Guido ever talk?
Please keep going on this one – you’re first – thankyou!
Kind regards,
S
Ellee, thank you! Only ‘cos I have Raffaele!!
The government doesn’t face the fine, Ellee. The taxpayers do. Including, ironically, those taxpayers who missed out on the EU subsidies because of the Government’s incompetence.
For this and many other reasons, the only effective way to discipline politicians is to hang a few “pour encourager les autres”. Nominations, please, for the first 10 to swing?
If I could only hang one, it would be David Milliband. He hasn’t done much harm yet, but he will. And doesn’t this Government believe in identifying and dealing with future offenders before they do harm?
[…] "The fact our government has already paid out this much before the full extent of the fines has been announced suggests Defra is expecting an expensive rebuke from the European Commission. […]