The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Farmer rakes in £3m in subsidies
Farming: One in five top 100 EU cash recipients are aristocrats
A north- east business topped the league table for UK farm payments last year after raking in nearly £ 3million in subsidies from the European Union.
Aberdeenshire farmer Frank Smart, of Banchory based Frank A Smart and Sons Ltd, was the highest paid EU farm subsidy payment recipient in the UK.
An investigation by environmental campaign group Greenpeace also found that one in five of the top 100 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) recipients were farm businesses owned or controlled by members of aristocratic families including the Earl of Moray.
Support payments under the Cap are designed to subsidise food production and ensure a good and plentiful supply of affordable goods for the public.
However, the scheme has fallen foul to “slipper farmers” – people who claim subsidies on rented land without actively farming it themselves.
Farming union NFU Scotland (NFUS) has long campaigned for subsidies to only be awarded to active farmers, and the Scottish Government has introduced rules to try to achieve this.
However, the rules are being phased in and many landowners are still managing to receive vast sums of money through loopholes in the system.
NFUS chief executive Scott Walker said: “Simply having land shouldn’t be enough of a reason to qualify for a payment and there are a couple of people who have used the system to their full advantage. But the vast majority of farmers and crofters out there need that money just to stay in business.”
Liberal Democrat MSP for the north-east, Mike Rumbles, yesterday accused Government of “being asleep at the wheel” for
“A couple of people have used the system to their full advantage”
allowing large landowners to receive millions in subsidy support.
He said: “This is a clear indication of how broken the current system is. The Scottish Government now has the opportunity to ensure that the available funding for our farming industry goes directly to those who need support. As I said in parliament on Tuesday, we have to remember that 38% of farmers have an income of less than £10,000 a year.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman last night said: “We want to ensure that farmers who are actively farming receive the support they need to produce food.
“That is why we pressed for a minimum activity clause and we have a five point plan to tackle and deter so-called slipper farming.”
She said payment regions had been changed to reflect the quality of the land being farmed, and a new clause in 2018 would prevent anyone from receiving more than EUR 600,000 (£520,000) for their basic payment. Frank Smart declined to comment last night.
The Scottish Government’s “car crash” £ 178million farm payments IT system is at the centre of yet another blunder as farmers await the release of 2016 subsidy monies.
Letters have been issued across Scotland by Holyrood outlining payments under a new national loan scheme – set up to safeguard farmers from a repeat of the 2015 IT payment system debacle, during which the Gove r nment’s computer software proved wholly incapable of issuing eligible farmers with cash support payments.
The loan scheme is being offered to about 17,000 of the 18,300 Scottish farmers and crofters who have applied for 2016 direct subsidy support payments. It is designed to offer 80% of total support, which is set to be paid during the first week of November.
However, it has now emerged the information used by government to calculate its sums was, in many cases, wrong.
According to NFU Scotland, it has received countless telephone calls from worried farmers than not all of the region 3 land that they had included in their 2016 claim – typically hill ground – had been included in the calculations for their national loan.
While the government has held its hands up quickly to the mistake, it said unfortunately the error was only recognised after letters were sent for distribution.
It now intends to contact each of the hundreds of farmers and crofters concerned – and will issue new loan offers accordingly.
NFUS chief executive Scott Walker said: “The loan scheme is a recognition of the fact that the IT system would not deliver 2016 Cap monies in good time. The Scottish Government sawthe car crash that this would have had on the rural economy and preempted it by introducing a loan scheme to help ensure that finances in the rural economy would keep moving. To hear that yet another IT flaw has caused problems for the loan scheme is deeply disappointing.”
North- east Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Rumbles described the situation as an “utter farce”.
He said: “There cannot be a farmer or crofter in the country who still has confidence in the ability of the Scottish Government to manage their Cap payments effectively.”
Scottish Conservative rural affairs spokesman and Aberdeenshire farmer Peter Chapman MSP was also quick to criticise Government.
He said: “You really couldn’t make this up. It is an absolutely shocking catalogue of blunders and farmers will be wondering when it is ever going to end.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman last night said: “Clearly we regret this miscalculation – which has nothing to do with the new IT system. We have acted very swiftly to address it and to ensure i t doesn’t affec t the timetable for getting the loan payments to farmers.”