Ewing’s lost all trust of farming fraternity

This time last year, we were all trying to get to grips with the idea that the UK had voted for Brexit. A year on and we’re no further forward, but this time it’s the Scottish Government’s abysmal record on farm subsidies which has been making the headlines, while Fergus Ewing has lost the trust of the farming fraternity after only one year as cabinet secretary.

First there were his assurances that everything was on track for payments to be made by the June 30 deadline, then came the admission that the Cabinet had known the payment deadline couldn’t be met, and – looking down the barrel of a £60 million fine – had asked Brussels for an extension until October.

Mr Ewing and the First Minister were handed a ‘get out of jail free’ card by Defra which had paid English farmers 99.2% of their subsidy money and lifted the total for the UK over the magical 95% threshold.

Did a grateful First Minister send a ‘thank you’ note to Defra for saving Scottish taxpayers £60m? Let’s not hold our breath!

So, MSPs went off on their holidays, Scotgov’s off the hook, it’ll be business as usual and the farmers who have yet to be paid their money will be waiting till the cows come home.

Mr Ewing likes to remind us that his staff are working “flat-out” to get payments out to farmers. They’ve been “flat-out” for years now and getting nowhere fast, but a Scotgov insider revealed that there is absolutely no incentive to get the government IT system working because key personnel are being paid an astonishing £1,500 per day.

That should be hard to believe in these times of austerity, but we’re so accustomed to the never-ending scandals and waste of public money that have bedevilled the IT project, that another taxpayer-funded dripping roast is neither here nor there.

Mr Ewing’s credibility went out the window, and this latest chapter in the long-running payments saga may see him join his predecessor on the back benches sooner than expected since he has clearly failed to deliver on his early promise to sort things out.

That would be unfortunate since he seems to be the only cabinet member with a grasp of economics and any understanding of what goes on in the real world.

His only chance of salvaging his damaged reputation with farmers is to own up to the full extent of the problems with the IT system and admit that the unholy mess is unfixable.

This would certainly earn him no Brownie points with his boss, who simply cannot admit that her government gets things wrong, but he might as well go for it, for the Auditor General is a terrible clype.

In her latest report, she revealed that there are no recovery measures in place to deal with systems breakdowns. There’s no end in sight to it all and it’s looking like it’ll be a third year of loans and confusion.

You really couldn’t make it up.

Mr Ewing and the First Minister were handed a ‘get out of jail free’ card by Defra