Examination of witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2000
MR MARK
THOMASIN-FOSTER,
MRS FRANCES
BEATTY and MISS
LUCY MORGAN
EDWARDS
Chairman
80. I am not sure I am.
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) To start with, the average ownership
of the CLA membership is just under 100 acres. So, in fact, we
are not the big fat-cats.
81. But there are a lot of fat-cats about.
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) There are in industry, there
are in any business—there are big businesses and there are
small businesses. We represent that level of ownership, which
is quite small. Many are farmers; some, indeed, will be tenants
but many are owner-occupiers, and some are pure landlords. So
it is not fat-cats. I used the TLC point, actually, to try and
open this up. It is TLC that we are trying to provide to our countryside,
to our rural businesses. That is where it ends up. It is not TLC
which is looking after you as an individual or me as a farmer;
it is enabling TLC to get through to the countryside management—and
the farmers, landowners, tenants and owner-occupiers are the managers
of that land. That, surely, must be the aim that we are trying
to achieve; we are trying to make the best management process
that we can for our countryside in general—whether it is
agriculture, whether it is environment, whether it is social,
whether it is economic.
Chairman: There are a lot of supplementaries
on this so I will ask colleagues to be crisp.
Mr Drew
82. A very quick observation, which I would
welcome your comment on. I have just had a quick read of the PricewaterhouseCoopers
report, and nowhere does it mention at all linkages with either
Business Link or the new Small Business Service. If we are asking
farmers to become more business-like, more strategic in their
vision, how the hell can we expect them to move in that direction
when the obvious linkages are just not being explored at all?
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) The only comment I can make to
you is that, for the first time, this very week I have made contact
with my own Business Link in Essex. So it is, perhaps, very small
pickings, but I think the point is well made. We are dealing with
businesses, albeit many of them micro-businesses, in the countryside.
83. I know why it has happened, because there
is not the expertise within those offices. In my own county only
recently have we taken people on. If we are going to look at how
we can, if you like, both devolve and, essentially, with some
aspects of the work, centralise—and the two extremes are
being seen at the same time—we need to be even more local
to the farmers, to the CLA and the TFAs. I would just be interested
to know if that is something that is completely missing in this
whole debate.
(Mrs Beatty) It is one of the things that is beginning
to come out of regional government. Again, I go back to the West
Midlands because that is the area I co-ordinate, but the link
with Business Links—which is now the Small Business Service—is
already beginning to be developed through ourselves and the NFU.
It is this urban/rural link again that has become so profoundly
important in regional government. That is another good feature
about the future of regional government, if you like—wherever
it ends up—that urban business is beginning to understand
rural business, and the other way round. I think that will come
forward. I am sure it is going to make an improvement in future.
Dr Turner
84. I would like to clarify some of the points
you make about IT in your document. You recognise that electronic
communication can reduce but, as you pointed out, it is not going
to eliminate, the need for face-to-face contact. Would you accept
it can substantially reduce? Does the CLA accept that electronic
communication can substantially reduce the need for contact? Is
it a marginal reduction you are accepting, or a substantial reduction?
(Mrs Beatty) It will be substantial, without a shadow
of a doubt, in due course.
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) It is the time-scale.
85. That is the second question I wanted to
ask. As you have sat there this morning you, perhaps, know what
my view is, but what is your view on the realism, starting where
you are now (and I would like to know roughly what you think the
starting point is with your members) in terms of access to IT
facilities, of the Government's target for essential completion
by 2008—apart from some face-to-face contact, which I accept
is essential? Would you accept that as a realistic target?
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) The average age of a farmer is
somewhere in the region of 56, 57. He is going to be a difficult
animal to convert with all confidence.
86. I was not asking you about the difficulty
of getting them converted, I am asking whether you think that
is realistic.
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) I am qualifying my answer, Chairman.
It is a difficult pledge to give. I think the CLA view is, yes,
that is something we should be working towards, but the caveat
is there that I am not certain we can get to that level.
87. We cannot often be certain of targets. The
Government often finds out.
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) The IT technology must develop:
it must give confidence that you can transmit that data with confidence,
that you can fill those forms in with confidence, you can be confident
that there is an appeal mechanism if you have transmitted it wrong,
etc. So, ideally, yes.
88. Some electronic forms refuse to transmit
themselves correctly, but if we pass over those matters, I do
understand your concerns, given the history of Government computer
projects. It is going to have to be brought in, presumably, with
some trialing, and I would accept those caveats which you have
quite correctly emphasised. You talk about provision of necessary
hardware, and the only hardware you mention is ISDN lines. I am
not sure about 2008 for ISDN lines, but I take the point. By the
word "provision" do you mean "availability"
or do you mean someone is paying for it for you? Are you saying
"availability" of hardware or are you talking about
being helped to have and own computers and ISDN lines?
(Mrs Beatty) It is hardware we are looking at at the
moment, because one way forward with the hardware—because
you can trust third parties are going to be absolutely critical
of the whole thing—if you were looking at it laterally,
is you could use post offices. Why not? There should be village
centres where there is available hardware—and software.
The other thing is that it does not want to become a gravy train
for professionals filling in forms of 62-year olds who have not
a clue what they are doing and do not know how to turn a computer
on. That is another big issue. We are working regionally with
Harper Adams to see if there is a way that the industry itself
could actually put this service out to the more diffident farmers,
but the time factor is very difficult. By 2008, one would hope,
it would be possible, yes, because the farmer will follow the
subsidy—to put it bluntly—and will somehow work his
way through the system, but the system has got to be failsafe,
both in terms of the stuff coming out of the Government and the
way farmers are helped to manage it. Hardware should certainly
be made available in all sorts of different areas. Computer companies
are offering free computers in some cases.
89. I want to be clear about provision. "Provision"
can be someone giving something. I really feel you are probably
saying it should be available and that you would accept that it
is not necessarily the government that is handing it over to the
farmers.
(Mrs Beatty) The Shropshire Training Group will tell
you that of their membership 30 per cent—and they are training
in hedge laying as well as computers—have got computers.
90. Is that typical of the membership?
(Mrs Beatty) That is a fairly normal, Shropshire farmer;
average sized stock farmer. Of those, only about 10 per cent ever
turn them on. That is more worrying than the fact that they have
got the hardware.
91. One last point. You have mentioned already
the fact that you are wondering about whether there is some equivalent
of an accountant for your income tax form. Does the Association
itself see that it might be able to organise a mechanism by which
its membership would have access to an intermediary to help with
the process? Do you see that as a role for the Association?
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) It could be. We have a rural
business network which is a computer which links a lot of us together,
brings information to our members, and they can join it. So we
have been, for five years now, working on this type of electronic
communication tool. If that answers your question.
Mr Jack
92. The British Cattle Movement Service: one
location, complex issues. How have your members got on with that?
(Miss Morgan Edwards) We have taken an interest in
the British Cattle Movement Service since its inception three
years ago now, and at the time we tried to get the message across
fairly strongly to Government that we felt that this was something
that should have been farmed out to the private sector rather
than being provided by MAFF. We were not convinced of their batch
processing system or of the type of technology they wanted to
use. We also had questions about transparency in respect of costs,
and efficiency and accountability and so on. We still have those
questions—given that, ultimately, farmers might again be
asked to pay for the system.
93. With great respect, it is a very interesting
commentary and we can have a separate inquiry into why, but the
question I asked was "How have your members got on with a
service which has a single location but deals with complex issues?"
As I think your evidence indicated earlier, farmers do have complex
questions to answer about changes of ownership, changes in passports
and so on. Has it worked? The point I am getting at is that there
are not regional centres of the British Cattle Movement Service,
there is only one of them.
(Miss Morgan Edwards) I think that has worked well.
The call centres have been quite efficiently run. There are problems
with errors—and quite considerable problems—and we
can provide more data on that if you require. I think it is possibly
dangerous to go down the road of making an analogy between the
BCMS and an overall rationalisation of processing and extra support
of IACS submission, given the comments that I made earlier about
the complexity of the rules, because that does not necessarily
always apply to the BCMS, and it is very onerous and there is
a problem with error rate. It does not quite relate in the same
way.
94. One other question. One could say to you
that what farming is asking for is yet another extension of more
nannying. Tax, for example, is an incredibly complex area, yet
many people cope. Farmers, by and large, when they see money coming
into view, usually cope. Why should they have all this localised
back-up, arm-round TLC? Why should they not just get on and sort
the job out? Ordinary citizens, without vast back-up, have to
deal with tax matters off their own back. There are no great centres.
They can go to their tax office if they want, but they seem to
cope themselves. Why can farmers not do it?
(Miss Morgan Edwards) I think the difference is the
number of professionals who understand the system within which
farmers are having to operate. In a tax system one can employ
an accountant who will understand the system to be fairly transparent
to them, but when farmers are operating within EU/CAP schemes
the rules are constantly changing, and there are very few officials—even
throughout MAFF—that actually understand the application
of the rules. As I said earlier, I might `phone up Whitehall livestock
department on the sheep side and find there is only one person
there who understands the particular aspect I am trying to get
at. He might have to go off and do some research and come back
to me and say "Well, on this partnership structure the person
should have foreseen that he could have submitted a covering letter
with his IACS form prior to changing his partnership", and
it all becomes complex. It is not the same as the tax system.
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) As CAP changes—reforms—and
as we probably see less production subsidy and more environmental
and social subsidy coming through—support requirements,
or whatever it is—complexity increases and, indeed, delivery
of that becomes more and more and more important. A farmer has
got to turn from just producing that extra few tonnes per acre
or litres of milk to start thinking what he is doing for his countryside.
He needs help. I believe in that.
Chairman
95. Just out of interest, where did you get
your copy of the Pricewaterhouse report from?
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) We do not have a copy.
Chairman: You must be the only people in the
entire galaxy who have not been slipped a copy.
Mr Marsden
96. Just for the record, I am a member of the
Agricultural Rural Economy Committee of the CLA, which is unpaid
and is co-opted. When we are talking about IT—this is an
aside—I am reminded of the time when an older secretary
at a former place of work decided, just before her retirement,
she wanted to learn about IT and duly turned up to the training
course. She was told by the instructor "Please move the mouse
around the screen" and she eventually said she could not
do this task. The instructor went round to find out what the problem
was and she was sitting there, having picked up the mouse, putting
it on the VDU and trying to move it around. This reinforces the
stereotype that somehow older people cannot actually cope with
IT. There is an interesting stat that the fastest growing use
of computers is in the over-50s, and I think people do sometimes
underestimate the fact that as long as there is the time they
can actually overcome some of those problems. Can I just turn
to what I am supposed to be talking about, and that is the role
and performance of the RSCs and the TLC aspect. Could you give
some examples of where individual RSCs have played a greater role
in the community and how they assist in the community beyond their
regulatory duties?
(Mrs Beatty) This is going to come back to the Rural
Development Regulation because they will have full responsibility
for all the leader funds which have always been targeted into
5(b) areas up to now but are now going to be county-wide so they
will have responsibility for community projects, delivery and
payment, through sort of local consortiums. The system will not
change in delivering leaders for things like village halls and
all sorts of things coming in that they are already involved in.
Of course, on the environment work they have been doing they have
really quite a lot of community involvement when they are doing
farm woodland schemes and the access part of the Countryside Stewardship,
or the stewardship programmes themselves. They work very closely
on the ground, I find, on delivering the projects with a local
vision rather than just a farming vision.
97. So you are emphasising the fact that, with
the stress that farmers and their families are under at the moment,
having a friendly voice over the telephone or face-to-face in
a meeting can help reduce some of that stress, because of the
complexity of the paperwork or even electronic versions?
(Mr Thomasin-Foster) Inevitably, at the moment, yes.
98. That is the sort of positive side. Can I
turn to the more negative side. You do actually say, in your evidence,
that there is criticism of regional staff in the way they deal
with regulatory matters, including the lack of local discretion
and the inability of local officials to understand the rules.
How widespread are these concerns, do you think?
(Miss Morgan Edwards) I know that, on the one hand,
we are saying we want to retain contact between people on the
ground, and, on the other hand, we are saying that perhaps the
quality in pro-activeness of their staff has declined recently.
I think it does vary between regions, and we have good reports
from some regions with respect to processing payments and so on,
and from others there are bad reports, but generally speaking
I think it all comes back, I am afraid, to the complexity of the
rules and the position that MAFF takes in not having any discretion
in their application, and this comes back to having an appeals
mechanism for genuine mistakes.
99. Is the problem the quality of the staff
or is it the quality of the information that they can then give
out because of the restrictions and complexities of the system
they have to work in?
(Miss Morgan Edwards) I think it is partly because,
essentially, they have been neutered by the fact that everything
is centralised now in the administration of the agency's funds
and direct payments, but it is also because of their fear of disallowance—of
the Commission making payments if we make mistakes and if RSC
officials make mistakes in the advice they give to people on the
ground.
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