Farm payment fiasco does not compute

Another day in Holyrood brought another humiliating interrogation for Rural Secretary Fergus Ewing over the farm payments IT fiasco. A third year of Government loans could be on the cards. Farmers will most likely have to apply yet again for money to tide them over while an ill-equipped £178million computer system chews its way through the calculations.

It will be September before we know and the uncertainty does nothing to restore faith the system is fit for purpose.

This debacle has haunted the Government for three years and already cost one rural secretary his job. Opposition politicians find it difficult to hide their glee over the SNP’s discomfort, and the First Minister’s lack of openness last week over applying to the Commission cap-in-hand for an extension to the end of June payment deadline was an unnecessary own goal.

For farmers at the end of the queue – the “difficult” cases waiting for money that should have been in their bank accounts months ago – it is a desperate situation. Patience is threadbare, the farmers’ union is raging, yet no amount of rhetoric can resolve the system’s inbuilt defects.

The irony is that by the time the IT system works, Brexit will likely make it obsolete.

As we wave goodbye to £178 million, several political scalps and years of heartache, policy makers need to learn from the experience before they commission the next computer.