Administration accused of incompetence

The government came under fierce criticism for its handling of the IT programme from both Scottish Conservative and Scottish Liberal Democrat politicians.

The Scottish Conservatives’ shadow rural secretary, Peter Chapman, said farmers have had to “bear the brunt of SNP incompetence for too long”.

“It’s bad enough rural communities were starved of hundreds of millions of pounds last year because of this,” he said.

“But now we learn this will keep causing problems for countryside businesses until next year at least.

“In addition, the lack of a disaster recovery solution is alarming.

This could be catastrophic if the system was hacked and this was highlighted as a risk a year ago.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat rural spokesman Mike Rumbles said the report amounted to a “damning indictment” of government’s failures.

“Audit Scotland have made it clear this is not just a problem with a broken IT system or a single ministerial bungle.

“The Scottish Government has repeatedly added fuel to the fire, blunder after blunder.

“The SNP’s ignorance and contempt for our rural communities has caused lasting damage to jobs, investment and growth in our rural economy. They still refuse to put the time and effort into fixing these issues. They won’t even assess the harm that has been done.”

Mike Rumbles of the Lib Dems.