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The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of freedom of information and whether the Data Protection Act might prevent us from publishing full details of the evidence behind policy decisions. As Minister with responsibility for science, I intend to ensure that I
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publish in full the reasoning behind all key decisions and publish as much information as possible, without infringing people’s rights or the legislation. There should be a general presumption of openness and transparency in all that we do. The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of the precautionary principle, which I agree is often misunderstood by many people. I want to come back to that, and perhaps we will want to discuss it in more detail on another occasion.

The hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) is to be congratulated on his change of role. I look forward to continuing to joust with him, just as we jousted with each other from time to time across the Chamber when he was the Opposition spokesman on DEFRA. He summarised a number of contributions that were made during the debate. I take full account of what he has to say about science, the fishing industry and the importance of evidence-based policy making. Again, getting the right balance between the science—where there is some uncertainty and a level of dispute, as he well knows, in the fisheries industry—and mature policy judgments is what it is all about.

The hon. Gentleman made a number of comments about Lord Sainsbury. I want to make it absolutely clear to the House that David Sainsbury completely absented himself from all policy decisions in Government on the issue of GM. Indeed, I shall go further and say that Lord Sainsbury is widely recognised by all who know him as having been an excellent science Minister. He played a leading role in the development of the 10-year science and innovation framework for the United Kingdom and was instrumental in ensuring that the science budget grew massively over the past 10 years. I do not believe that anyone who has met him or talked to him would ever think that he would be influenced by ulterior motives.

When the Science and Technology Committee published its report “Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making” in November 2006, it included 69 recommendations. At the time, the Government welcomed its conclusions and recommendations, and that remains the case today. There is still more to be done. We are not complacent and we want to do more to ensure that science is managed and used to best effect by Government. We have made a great deal of progress over the past 10 years, and we have made further progress since the Committee published its report last year. We are determined to continue making progress. As a Government we remain firmly committed to continuing to improve our use of scientific advice, our management of risk and our use of evidence to support policy. I look forward to the continuing scrutiny of how we do that by hon. Members.

Question deferred, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54(4 ) (Consideration of estimates ).


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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

[ Relevant documents: Third R eport from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Session 2006-07, HC 107, on the Rural Payments Agency and the implementation of the Single P ayment Scheme; and Fourth R eport from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Session 2006-07, HC 546, on the UK Government’s “ Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy” . ]

This Estimate is to be considered in so far as i t relates to the Rural Payments Age ncy, the implementation of the Single Payment S cheme and the UK Government’s “ Vision for the Common Agricul tural Policy” (Resolution of 2 July).

Motion made, and Question proposed,

7.17 pm

Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde) (Con): May I say how delighted I am that at last, following on from December 2002, the House has an opportunity to debate matters connected with agriculture? I want to say at the outset how pleased I was that the Liaison Committee saw fit to recommend two of the reports by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee—the report on the Government’s document “A Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy” and the report on the Rural Payments Agency and the problems that it faced—as subjects for this part of the estimates day debate.

In the light of the publication in December 2005 of a seminal document looking to the future of the common agricultural policy, my only regret is that the Government have not seen fit to hold any kind of debate on a document that was billed as singularly important, particularly during the remaining weeks of the British presidency, which is when it was produced. Given the fact that some 40 per cent. of European Union expenditure is still on agriculture—it is a major part of the EU budget—it was something of a surprise to me and to the Committee that the Government did not choose to debate that report. If nothing else, it would have given the House, and those who represent agricultural constituencies, an opportunity to make a contribution to the development of the ideas for reform of the CAP. I shall try to highlight some of the points that the Committee drew out as it looked into that subject.

I am delighted to see on the Front Bench the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), and I welcome him to his challenging role. Before the debate started, I noticed that he was thumbing through the “vision” document. It might have been the first time that he touched it, and if it was I hope that he enjoyed his brief read of it and that he will go back to it after the debate. It will be very
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important indeed, particularly as we move towards 2008, when the European Union will take stock and give the common agricultural policy a health check. In particular, the EU will consider the major reforms that were introduced by the previous Commissioner in 2002, and thinking will begin to turn towards the reform programme that is scheduled to be introduced in 2013, when, effectively, the current CAP will come to an end. It all sounds a long time away, but as we all know, given the way in which the wheels of Europe turn, we will arrive at that point rather quickly. If we have not done our homework, we will not be prepared to lead and take part in the debate about shaping not only the future of Europe’s agriculture but its rural policy. Our report touches on that point.

Kelvin Hopkins (Luton, North) (Lab): Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, even in a purely urban constituency such as mine, constituents must pay for the CAP through their taxes and through high food prices? The issue affects my constituents, as well as his.

Mr. Jack: In his normal perceptive way, the hon. Gentleman picks up on a number of themes of the report that I shall discuss in a moment. The question whether Europe’s current expenditure on agriculture and, to a degree, its rural policy is value for money is a central issue for discussion. As agricultural policy moves from being a question of subsidising production to a question of paying for environmental goods and the development of a rural policy for new and existing member states, challenging new subjects of debate arise.

One point that the report touches on is on what exactly the money should be spent. For example, in the context of environmental goods, what exactly do the public want purchased in their name? In our report on the CAP and in previous reports, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee touched on that very point and asked the Government to try to evaluate and have a debate on the matter, to make certain that the use of public moneys is properly targeted. That goes back to the point raised by the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins): the public who are effectively paying for such schemes through their taxes must feel that they are getting some value for money. Without doubt, the public enjoy the countryside and good quality food, but at the moment they do not have much of a say about the use to which public funds are put.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): I thank my right hon. Friend—as I will call him—the Chair of our Select Committee for giving way. May I develop the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins)? Is it not the case that the environmental goods to which my right hon. Friend refers are extensively used and appreciated by people in rural areas? There is a great deal of evidence that people in urban and metropolitan areas do not make sufficient use of the goods for which their taxes pay. Those in rural areas and landowners can provide access to the countryside; they need to reach out and promote access to the settings which so many people who live in rural areas enjoy.


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Mr. Jack: I concur entirely with everything that my hon. Friend has said. I will call him my hon. Friend, because we are friends on the Committee and we work closely together. In his normal perceptive way, he has put his finger on an important point. Next year, it is food and farming year, which in a way will try to bring town and country closer together. Some of the issues that he has referred to will then be the subject of more intense dialogue as farming reaches out to the urban population.

In preparation for this debate, I made a list—I do not claim for a moment that it is the definitive list—of some of the challenges that UK agriculture faces. I did so because the other challenge of this debate is how to bring together two reports that deal with items that are different but none the less related. I listed the following points. Our, and indeed Europe’s, agricultural industry faces challenges in relation to food security in a world where the distance that food travels is an issue, and where the transmission of disease can threaten the supply chain. We must also consider biodiversity, environmental responsibilities, animal welfare, biofuels, genetically modified crops, global competitiveness, powerful supermarkets, the survival of the rural economy, the reform of the common agricultural policy, which we are discussing, and the restructuring of rural policy. That is just my list and I am sure that other right hon. and hon. Members who are taking part in the debate will have their own list.

The only problem with my list is that the “vision” document effectively sidestepped many of those issues. It went down the road of developing and extending existing thinking and there was very little that was novel in it. Where there was novelty—and this is a further item to add to my list—was on the question of how farmers should be paid. We have moved to an era of the single farm payment, but previously there were some 38 different commodity regimes, each with their own individual payment scheme and different rules for farmers. The simplified method of the single farm payment scheme introduced a one-off system under which farmers were paid. Initially, that related to historic payments. Subsequently, we moved to payments relating to the area that they farm. That method brought into being a process whereby farmers had some of their subventions top-sliced to help to pay for a system of modulation for the development of rural policy.

Our report on the single farm payment and what went wrong raises not only a series of practical observations on the execution of Government policy but some fundamental points of principle. Before I go into detail on that point, I would like to put on the record my appreciation of the work of the staff of the Select Committee. It is all right for the Chair to stand up and make a speech in a debate, but we could not do so if we did not have reports to discuss, information to dissect and analyse, and results put to us. We could not do so if we did not have talented people as our Clerks. Matthew Hamlyn began the investigation into the single farm payment for us and his successor Chris Stanton came into post at the end of the inquiry; he had to assimilate all the facts, and helped to draft the report. I should also mention our former second Clerk Jenny McCullough. Those three people played a crucial role, as did Jonathan Little, our agricultural specialist,
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who has moved on to new work with Natural England. Without those people, we would not have produced the two reports. I put on record my sincere appreciation of all that they did to bring them about.

The report on the Rural Payments Agency can be summarised as a classic piece of Select Committee work. We were dogged in our determination to get to the bottom of what went wrong. We took our time, but we finally got our man—as the Mounties say—when we got hold of the former chief executive of the RPA, Johnston McNeill. In our discussions with him, we were able to get to the heart of what went wrong. However, we had already made our own initial foray into the subject; in its previous work, the Committee warned the Government that change to the way in which the RPA operated would be fraught if the agency did not have the right IT and computer systems expertise. Despite those warnings, given in 2003, there has been a debacle concerning a core responsibility of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. That is why our report goes beyond the mechanics of what went wrong and explores fundamental issues to do with accountability in government.

One of the core responsibilities of DEFRA is to ensure that farmers are paid a just price, and on time. That is about not just ensuring the survival of farming businesses, but making certain that the rural economy’s cash flow is not disrupted, and that a central function of DEFRA is carried out effectively and efficiently. In the case of the Rural Payments Agency and the delivery of the single farm payment, that was not the case.

The problem began in 2001, with the RPA change programme, and it came home to roost when the European Union agreed decoupling for the single farm payment on 26 June 2003. A year later, on 17 June 2004, Mr. Andy Lebrecht, a senior civil servant in DEFRA, told the Department’s management board that payments under the new arrangements would be made by 1 December 2005. The die was cast, the expectations in farming were there and preparations had begun. By 19 January 2005, however, the Rural Payments Agency announced a delay.

The ministerial response from the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett), the former Secretary of State, was to appear at the National Farmers Union conference and say that she was “bloody livid” about the situation. Although that was perhaps not the response that should have come from the Secretary of State, she should have been fully engaged in the decision-making processes that led to the problems that the RPA faced. She was the Secretary of State when the policies were designed and when the implications were considered, and she ultimately carried the responsibility for what happened in her Department —[ Interruption. ] Perhaps she is listening to the debate, and we may have an unusual intervention by telephone—perhaps not.

The way in which DEFRA went about introducing the programme was too much change, too soon. That is clear from what the Department has said in its as-yet-to-be-published report and from the information that the Department gave the Committee, which is why we singled out certain named individuals who gave evidence to us. We believed that they bore a responsibility for what had occurred, and I do not resile for one moment from the
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fact that the Committee’s report put down some strong words about who was responsible. One should bear in mind the billions of pounds that were not delivered to England’s farmers and the rural economy, as well as the losses to the farming industry—calculated at £20 million—which will have an incalculable effect on the cash flow of the rural economy.

There are also the cost overruns to the Department. To look at the facts, the NAO said that DEFRA would realise only £7.5 million of the £164 million-worth of savings from the introduction of the single farm payment scheme. When it looked at the RPA operating business plan in late 2006, the NAO said that the RPA’s running costs would be £197.1 million, with an additional £46 million on top of that, which consisted of a further £27 million in extra running costs and £19 million for new software developments, against an original budget of £190 million.

If that degree of financial mismanagement had occurred in a public limited company, the board would have been out, never mind the chief executive. That is why our report had some strong things to say about named officials, as it was quite clear not only from our analysis but from the work done by the National Audit Office, which has now been vindicated by the Public Accounts Committee, that we had to probe who was responsible for DEFRA’s failure to carry out one of its central activities. Those failures to deliver have led DEFRA to face for the first tranche of failed payments a disallowance from the European Union of £131 million. In addition, there is a contingent liability on DEFRA’s books of £305 million. Not all of it is directly related to the RPA, but that is an indictment of failure, and that is why our report was couched in strong terms.

Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire) (Lab): One of the largest failures—probably the fundamental failure in this project—was that of risk analysis and risk management. Would it surprise the right hon. Gentleman that the former permanent secretary, who is one of the named officials in the report, chairs the body looking at risk management on behalf of the Treasury for the civil service?

Mr. Jack: That person will certainly understand about risk, but I am not so certain about management. The hon. Gentleman’s point worries me very considerably indeed. At the heart of this matter are the mechanisms that the Government put in place when they introduce complex IT projects. Indeed, when the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Select Committee he highlighted that very point about the need to look at issues in detail and have the right expertise to guide us forward. What was clear, however, was the flawed relationship between DEFRA and its IT provider, Accenture, which was taken on to make changes in the Rural Payments Agency. Then, however, there had to be a second and subsequent discussion about how the single payment scheme would be introduced. DEFRA decided that it would remove some of its staff in pursuit of its Gershon savings, only to find that it then had to recruit another 900 temporary people in the Rural Payments Agency to make the scheme work. The very people who had experience of dealing with farmers were removed as part of the change programme, only to be replaced by less than expert people. The Department had a rural information system—a
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computerised system that was supposed to cope with the mapping and to provide those running the single payment scheme with information—but it singularly failed. I could go on through the litany of failure.

On the question of risks, it beggars belief that the Office of Government Commerce did not put the brakes on what was happening. Yes, it produced some reports and red traffic lights, but despite the mounting risks of failure that were pointed out to DEFRA, which had a finger in the pie and an interest in the running of the Rural Payments Agency, and despite a great deal of investigation—I do not know whether the Department was blinded by events or by ministerial assurance that it would all be all right on the night—the wheel fell off big time. When, at the beginning of 2006, Ministers were promising payments first in February and then in March, the Committee produced an interim report warning of what was happening and talking about the need for interim payments, but we were rubbished by Lord Bach. I remember him talking on the “Today” programme about the Select Committee being chaired by a “very strong person, that Michael Jack—he’s a Conservative.” I resented the fact that he tried to politicise my work as the Chair to highlight the failures and danger points and what was going to happen with the Rural Payments Agency. In fairness to Lord Bach, he retracted some of those remarks when he gave evidence before us. When the wheel fell off, however, DEFRA had not heeded the warnings, and we now know what happened to the rural economy.

As for who was responsible and who should have accepted responsibility, the head that rolled was Mr. Johnston McNeill’s—it was the agency’s former chief executive who was fired. Sir Brian Bender, the former permanent secretary at the Department, whose name was on the documents about the Rural Payments Agency, the DEFRA change programme and the agreement on the path forward, and Mr. Andy Lebrecht, one of the most senior civil servants in the Department—he sat on the management boards of the Rural Payments Agency and, indeed, on DEFRA’s own boards and should have been the link—were the people who effectively signed off what happened. Rachel Lomax, who was supposed to be an expert, was brought into the Department to provide advice. Despite all that, there was still failure, but only one person has paid for it with their job. The then Secretary of State went on to become the Foreign Secretary—

Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes) (Con): Promotion.

Mr. Jack: She got promotion, while the farming industry lost £20 million and DEFRA’s costs overran, with all the problems that have resulted for British Waterways and the Environment Agency.


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