MP says rural payment staff bonuses are a ‘kick in the teeth’ for farmers
Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, today described news staff at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) had received almost £2 million in bonuses as a woeful use of public money.
Since being set up in 2005 the RPA, charged with organising the payment of European subsidies to farmers, has consistently been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with blunders being revealed on a regular basis.
It is understood many farmers were driven to the verge of bankruptcy as their subsidy cheques were continually delayed.
For those that did get them, things were little better with many more either being underpaid or, even worse, overpaid and then told several months later they had to repay the money.
Now a Freedom of Information (FoI) request has revealed the agency paid its staff £1.8 million in bonuses since being set up.
According to reports in the Yorkshire Post the bonuses were handed out to staff based on their achievement.
Graham said: “For the struggling farmers across my constituency this is nothing short of a kick in the teeth.
“It is just another example of a Government agency being set up in haste, failing to do its job correctly and then rewarding that very failure.”
And he added: “I agree with Shadow Agriculture Minister Jim Paice that it is quite disgusting that while farmers are either left wondering where payments are, or are hounded for overpayments and denied any compensation, agency officials are given generous bonuses.”
MPs have demanded that the RPA reports to them every three months after it wasted £680 million of taxpayers’ money.
Last year, the agency overpaid 1,700 farmers by £90m, some of whom are now refusing to repay the money. It also lost computer tapes containing confidential bank details for more than 100,000 farmers.
The agency was sharply criticised by the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee for having a disastrous IT system, poor management and delays in payments.
Latest figures, published this week, show that, as of December 31 2009, the total value of payments made under SPS for 2009 is just under £1.5 billion which equates to just under 78 per cent of the estimated total fund of £1.86 billion.
More than 91,000 farmers across the country have now received their full SPS payment, representing nearly 85 per cent of the estimated total claimant population of 107,500.
A spokeswoman for the RPA said the agency is now “working hard to finalise checks on the remaining claims and is aiming to pay farmers as quickly as possible”.
A National Audit Office report into the agency’s dealings was also strongly critical.
