Farm fiasco may run into a third year, admits SNP
Ministers face £60m f ines over farm cash fiasco No2
SCOTTISh ministers have admitted they may fail to meet the deadline to pay farmers EU subsidies again next year. Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing yesterday said the Scottish Government may be forced to bring forward another loans scheme for farmers over fears of more delays in 2018.
Mr Ewing has already admitted that ministers will fail to meet the 95 per cent target for 2016 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments by today’s deadline.
This could see the Government face fines of up to £60million from Brussels.
Now Mr Ewing has acknowledged that continuing problems with the administration’s £178million IT system could result in farmers facing delays with their next subsidy payments.
CAP assistance is paid to farmers by the European Union, administered by individual states.
Speaking on BBC’s Good Morning Scotland Mr Ewing said he hoped to know by August if problems with the IT system had been solved.
Asked if this meant the problem could see a third delay, Mr Ewing said: ‘If we are not absolutely sure in a couple of months’ time – after we have done further work with the contractors – that we shall be able to administer the payments on time then we will make sure the loan scheme exists.’
Mr Ewing was also forced to admit that the Government may also miss its own target of making 90 per cent of payments by today.
he said: ‘We expect to come very close to the deadline, we expect around 90 per cent of the payments will have been completed by tomorrow or just short of that.
‘We believe there are around 654 farmers whose payments have not yet been processed, however I wish to stress that these will be dealt with in the next few weeks. I said we shall fix it, and we are fixing it.’
Tory MSP Edward Mountain said: ‘The farming industry across the country is short of money and that means that people’s jobs, people’s livelihoods are actually threatened.
‘We have heard of farmers who are waiting to pay invoices but can’t pay them because they haven’t had the grant.’