Defra role is naughty step

Theresa May’s appointment of Andrea Leadsom as Defra minister has caused consternation in farming circles.

The minister’s muchcriticised remarks about keeping the hills for butterflies show how little she knows about farming and the countryside, but the poor woman clearly never imagined she’d end up in Defra – the political equivalent of the very naughty step.

Being the first to blink while challenging Mrs May for leadership of the Conservatives came at a heavy price, namely, the Defra brief and the bonfire of her political ambitions.

Farmer-politicians are scarce and generally don’t get to be in charge of Defra or SGRPID. But, really, is there anything to be gained from a minister with personal experience of his/her department’s sphere of operations? The current state of education and the NHS would suggest otherwise.

Fergus Ewing’s also new to the job and as MSP for a rural constituency it’s expected that he knows about farming and understands its problems.

However, he is tasked with fixing the unfixable, also known as Scotgov’s ruinously-expensive and bolshie IT system that doesn’t want to part with farmers’ money. Three months after his appointment, progress is still painfully slow.

The system (IT) has been persuaded to pay some farmers the balance of their BPS/Greening payments and it has reluctantly handed over some ewe hogg scheme money to some hill farmers. However there’s no sign of outstanding balance payments for the unfortunate farmers who incurred cross-compliance penalties last year. Apparently this is because IT hasn’t yet learned subtraction and can’t figure out how to deduct the fines from the balances. Over in the ewe hogg scheme section, subtraction’s no problem at all and IT has been merrily subtracting ewe hoggs from approved legitimate claims for no reason other than it can

There are BPS/Greening claims still to be approved and the balance of the LFASS payments is still to come as well as the SRDP payments which languish on the IT system builders’ ‘To-do’ list that nobody wants to think about until they get the last of the BPS / LFASS log-jam cleared. When is it all going to end?

That the CabSec doesn’t do irony is evident from his demands for the UK Government to provide clarity on the future of post-Brexit subsidy payments which are vital to farmers and the rural economy in Scotland. He even managed to say it with a straight face. His own Government’s clarity on payments vital to farmers and the rural economy has been non-existent and more than a few Scottish farmers could really be doing with some clarity about the here and now and why they have not received payments which should already be in their bank accounts.

Equally important is clarity on the next round of Cap payments so that farmers and suppliers have plenty of time to plan ahead.

Will the backlog of payments be done and dusted before December? Or January? Or even February? Some clarity from our farming-savvy CabSec would not go amiss.

Andrea Leadsom.