Government should stop passing the buck

Sir, The Scottish Government is facing a fine of up to £125 million over the SNP’s CAP payments fiasco.

On top of that, Scottish taxpayers will also be footing the bill for the Scottish Government’s failed IT system, which will cost £178 million.

To make matters even worse, despite spending a king’s ransom on this new IT system, around a quarter of farmers are still to receive any payment, despite the Scottish Government saying money would begin arriving in December last year.

Our farmers have been waiting an obscene amount of time to receive their money and, as such, our rural economy is being starved of hundreds of millions of pounds.

Despite Audit Scotland releasing a damning report into the SNP’s CAP payments crisis, and rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead resigning from the Scottish cabinet, Deputy First Minister John Swinney, on a recent radio interview, appeared to blame the EU and the farming industry itself, rather than taking responsibility for his party’s role in the matter.

It is high time the Scottish Government stopped constantly trying to pass the buck and sorted out this mess. Scotland’s farmers deserve better than this SNP government.