MPS urged to take tough stance on IT fiasco probe

With the Scottish Government officials involved in commissioning the flawed IT system for delivering farm support payments due to give evidence to the Scottish parliament’s public audit committee later this morning, NFU Scotland yesterday urged MSPS to give them a good grilling.

And the union called on the interrogators to establish whether the IT system would ever be fit for purpose and be capable of delivering payments accurately and on time in the future.

The Scottish Government’s common agricultural policy (CAP) futures programme – the IT programme which has struggledtodeliversupportpayments to farmers and crofters – has already come in for severe criticism, not least in a damning report produced by Audit Scotland.

Union president Allan Bowie said that deep flaws within the futures programme had placed the whole rural economy in jeopardy last spring.

“Audit Scotland has questioned whether the CAP futures programme will ever be fit for purpose and this evidence session provides MSPS with an opportunity to drill down on the reasons for that failure and for key Scottish Government officials to identify what is being done to rectify the failings,” he said.

Stating that the IT system was responsible for the tens of millions still missing from the rural economy, he said that it was totally unacceptable that technical glitches still meant officials were unable to give those still waiting on payments unambiguous answers on why this was so – or to give them a clear timetable for when their payment would be received.

He added that even those who had received payments were still without any details explaining how these had been calculated – vital information for tax and accounting purposes.

Bowie said that the union had welcomed last week’s announcement that national loans would

0 Farmers across Scotland are missing out on their cash be used to make partial payments to farmers in November: “However, it must be acknowledged that this measure, however welcome, is an admission that the IT system is still incapable of delivering CAP funds in a timely and effective manner for the 2016 payment run.

“This evidence session provides an opportunity for MSPS to identify what is being done to address that.”

Bowie also called for those who had been caught up at the tail end of last year’s payment log-jam not to suffer the same fate again.