| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester, South) (Lab):
The Government’s response to the Select Committee’s report on the Rural Payments Agency has not yet been reported to the House, so we cannot refer to it in detail. Were the Government in that response to seek to hide behind the argument that Select Committees ought not to act as disciplinary tribunals on matters relating to officials, or if the Government were to hide behind the ministerial
code when Select Committees criticise the behaviour of Secretaries of State, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that would be a grossly inadequate response to the very serious issues, both particular and general, that the Committee raised about accountability in this case, and more generally, with reference to the responsibilities of permanent secretaries and Secretaries of State?
Mr. Jack: Again, I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis. That is why the importance of the report goes well beyond its examination of the mechanics of what went wrong in the Rural Payments Agency. There is a wider question that the House should debate: when a Department fails to deliver on a core activity, who should pay the price? I go back to what I said before about a public limited company. If a plc had failed its shareholders in the way that the Rural Payments Agency has failed the farming community, not just the chairman and the chief executive but the board would be out. Why? Because they would know in simple terms that they had not done what they were employed to do.
I do not want to go beyond the boundaries of the debate, save to observe that if we look at many areas of Government—the Home Office and the Department of Health, to name but two—failed IT projects litter what those Departments have not done. Where did the responsibility lie? Now that we have a different Prime Minister, perhaps he will look at that point.
When we examine the RPA’s latest published business plan, the failure is summed up succinctly in a sentence or two. It states:
“The ambitions to implement a major change programme and simultaneously deliver a flagship new scheme (the Single Payment Scheme) proved not to be achievable in the timeframe foreseen”.
It goes on to say that the document covers the early stages of recovery for the RPA and outlines its strategy and business plan for 2007-08
“to meet the challenges we face to become an effective Paying Agency that meets its targets, responds to change and efficiently serves the needs of its customers.”
The process could go on until 2012, and as the Government’s reply to our report already indicates, it will cost another £55 million.
Mr. Todd: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Does he share my view on the subsequent episode? I was greatly reassured when Lord Rooker was appointed to continue the work of recovering the disasters of the programme, and he deserves to be complimented on much of the pragmatic activity that he as a Minister has led in that task.
Mr. Jack: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I recall, however, that Lord Rooker was careful not to go too far. At a meeting I attended, he came along and said, “I’ve come here to make sure you know absolutely nothing about what’s going to happen in the future until I’m clear what the detail is.” So I learned from that that we had a new form of pragmatism in the Department.
David Taylor: Does the House agree that it is a great pity that Hansard will not be able to reflect fully the right hon. Gentleman’s mastery of regional accents in this land, with which he regales us from time to time in Committee?
Mr. Jack: I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments.
I am sure we will continue to get candour, which is what is required. I observe in objective 5 of the business plan for 2007-08, on training, that the Rural Payments Agency hopes the outcome will be that
“Staff are clear about the Agency’s objectives, their role in achieving them and motivated for success”.
Some of those staff worked very hard indeed, but they were badly let down by the management.
Mr. Steen: My right hon. Friend may be aware that part of my constituency is Dartmoor national park. The hill farmers there have faced very difficult times. Will he comment on the problems that will arise if the single payment scheme continues not to differentiate hill farmers and lowland farmers? As I understand it, if that were the case, the hill farmers would give up hill farming, and the ramblers would have to wrestle through 6 ft of grass to get through to the Dartmoor national park, which was set up in the 1940s after the war to give recreation and leisure to urban dwellers. They will have to be extremely fit, they will need scythes and they will need military dress to get through the powerful obstacles that will prevent them from enjoying the pleasure and solitude of the Dartmoor national park.
Mr. Jack: I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s observations, but one of the problems that the single payment scheme had to cope with was exactly the differentiation that he mentioned between the upland areas and the lowland areas. It did so, and in differentiating as my hon. Friend suggests, it created further complexity in relation to the already complex use in England of the so-called dynamic hybrid model. I contrast the problems that we had in England in dealing with 121,000 farmers with the situation in Germany, where there were three times as many farmers, four different computer systems and 19 Länder as the paying agents, and the task was completed on time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Jonathan Shaw): It is fair to say that originally there were two areas, but there was a request from the industry to add a third area—moorlands.
Mr. Jack: Indeed, and there was also a request from the farming industry that horticultural land, for example, should be included. Part of the problem with the volume of work that overwhelmed the agency was the lack of appreciation by Ministers of what all that extra complexity, new land and everything else that they were introducing into payment for the first time would mean in reality. I will not labour the point further.
I draw my remarks to a conclusion on the single farm payment. We have raised the important issues of accountability, bad planning by the Department, and failure to heed warnings by a Select Committee, particularly in relation to IT. It may well take until 2012 to fix the RPA and another £55 million will have to be spent.
Mr. Steen: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again. Will he accept from me that there is another warning that needs to be sent to those responsible for single farm payments? Unless they get the upland payments right, national parks will be places that people cannot enter.
Mr. Jack: My hon. Friend tempts me into a debate on hill farming and upland activity, which I will resist. I hope that in his enthusiasm, the new Minister will be able to persuade the powers that be that the House should still, even now, have a proper chance to debate agricultural issues in a way that would allow my hon. Friend’s point about hill farming to be discussed. There may yet be a chance when we turn to the second of our reports, which considered common agricultural policy reform.
In summary, the Government missed the opportunity to put forward some genuinely visionary opportunities for the CAP against the background of the health check in 2008 and the fundamental reforms that will take place in 2013. The change of French President from Chirac to Sarkozy offers a new dynamic, but there is a problem—in countries such as Germany and France which traditionally drive the CAP debate, there is a difference between the agriculture ministries and the finance ministries. The agriculture ministries are traditional. They are not minded to change. They stick to 2013 as the date, and the only date, when the CAP could reform itself. They wish to postpone the removal of the dairy regime and the abolition of set-aside land. However, if one goes to the finance ministries, as we did in Germany and France, one will find that our new Prime Minister is their pin-up because he is advocating an abolition of pillar one and a reduction in expenditure, as they see it, in terms of the vision document. In his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was their No. 1 trailblazer for reform. However, in France and Germany the finance ministries play second fiddle to the agriculture ministries.
That is important, because when the Government introduced their vision document at the close of 2005 as a contribution to the debate on the budget of the European Union, and in an attempt to reduce the CAP budget, they failed to introduce it to other member states. In fact, judging by what we heard when we went to subsequent agricultural meetings of fellow European parliamentarians dealing with these matters, it did damage. If the Government want to resurrect their chances of influencing the direction of the CAP in future, they will have to spend a lot more time going out and explaining the UK position to our fellow Europeans, against a background of the feeling among the new member states that unless they are offered the same deal as the old member states they will not parley on any kind of change that will lead to a reduction in overall expenditure on the agricultural budget and a redistribution of moneys to the rural economy.
That is why our report calls for the development of a rural policy for Europe. As we have heard, the public are concerned about what this money is being used for. Farming has some major responsibilities in terms of the environment and biodiversity, and of change—of turning the rural economy into a place where farming is not the only activity. As the vision document correctly identifies, only about 1 per cent. of employment directly involves farming. Much else can be done in rural England, as in rural Europe, to develop new forms of economic activity, but the document is light on all those aspects.
We have recently been considering the new European Union treaty. The terminology of article 33, which deals with agriculture, is interesting. It says that the objectives of the CAP are
“to increase agricultural productivity...to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community...to stabilise
markets...to assure the availability of supplies...to ensure that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices.”
There is nothing about the environmental and biodiversity dimensions which now typify European concerns about animal welfare, disease or the competitive world in which agriculture operates. The discussion of the treaty has been a lost opportunity to redefine the scope and purpose of what agriculture is about. With our far more reform-minded view, that is something that we could yet still deal with. Our report lays out the challenges that remain in relation to Europe’s discussion of the future of its rural economy. There is a need to conduct a hearts and minds operation in relation to Europe. Reform is in the air as regards agriculture, and the competitive pressures are there. Questions of food security must be dealt with—there are no two ways about it.
The rural economy is something special, from the physical point of view and from the biodiversity point of view. It represents the lungs—the point of relaxation—for so many of the people whom we represent in urban Britain. The winds of change are blowing. Mrs. Fischer Boel has some interesting ideas on reforming the vegetable regime, and she has established common market organisations for all such regimes. There is discussion about removing the whole question of a dairy regime, which would set Britain’s efficient dairy farmers free. The reform opportunities are there to make Europe’s agriculture far more competitive and environmentally aware and to develop a vibrant rural economy. However, if the Government want to lead that debate, they will have to do far better than the vision document. That was a poor first step, but it may be the precursor to a bigger debate.
7.54 pm
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): I rise with some relief, having been contacted three or four hours ago by the Clerks of the Committee to be told that the Chairman of the Committee was stuck on the tarmac at the airport in Florence and might not be able to make the start of the debate. Had I delivered on my offer to open the debate if he could not, the House would not have been regaled with the forensic performance that we always appreciate from the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), or his entertaining tour d’horizon of some of the main participants in the Rural Payments Agency saga, in particular.
Together with my hon. Friend—as I shall call him—the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams), I was involved relatively early in the process, in late 2005, when we both visited the Reading office of the RPA in our roles as rapporteurs, when we did some of the early fact-finding work on what appeared to be going wrong with the single farm payment system. I am happy to make one or two salient observations from my own experience, having spent, before coming into this place in May 1997, three decades in medium to large-scale public sector information and communications technology projects. I have always taken a keen interest in the problems that Governments—successive Governments, to be fair—have had in delivering on large-scale systems of that kind.
At the start of his comments on the RPA, the Chairman of the Committee said that our report was shot through with concern and alarm that accountability had not been at work in the events that followed the problems with the single payment system. He said that only one person had been sacked for his role in this affair—Johnston McNeill, the chief executive of the RPA. However, given that the former Minister in the House of Lords was removed shortly after the saga started to bubble up, it could reasonably be inferred that there was a firm link between his sacking and the RPA system. It is odd that so few people paid the ultimate penalty. For example, the senior civil servant—the permanent secretary—escaped any blame, condemnation or criticism. Not only that, but while many people were being taken off on their career tumbrils to some far-off car park and summarily disposed of, he was slipping out of a side door and being promoted elsewhere in the Government bureaucracy. New terms could be created as a result of this process. When, in sport, people play a virtuoso sparkling role in any particular game, they are said to have “played a blinder”. The civil service equivalent is to bound up the career ladder from disaster to disaster, hereinafter to be known as “playing a Bender”. It is sad that that phrase could get into the English language in that way.
Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire) (Con): The hon. Gentleman might like to bring out the point that in his Committee’s report the then permanent secretary praises Mr. McNeill as being by far the best of the applicants for the job, and refers to his leadership of the Meat Hygiene Service. If he deemed that a success, that, if nothing else, brings his judgment into serious question.
David Taylor: In my sad experience, people in the upper echelons of the civil service, and to an extent in local government, and politicians who are elected to those various organisations, tend to have a less than complete appreciation of the potential and detail of the world of ICT. In such an environment, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. The “king” who is often chosen to be a consultant or to be directly responsible for a complex large-scale project can disappoint in many ways, because people do not know what they are looking for. They grasp at straws. They are susceptible to the blandishments of the snake-oil salesmen who populate the large-scale software package market. That is a pity. The hon. Gentleman’s own Government were equally guilty of that before 1997, and during the past 10 years we have shown that we are not immune to the same problems.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): I know that we cannot refer in any detail to the Government’s response to the Committee’s report, which has taken a long time to come. Given my hon. Friend’s criticism, there does not seem to be much evidence that the Government’s response has taken any notice, in any detail, of the criticisms that we advanced. What are his comments on that?
David Taylor:
My hon. Friend is right. We cannot refer to the response in any detail, but I shall come to a criticism of the Government’s probable response in a
moment. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs continues to reiterate that the responsibility for delivering the scheme and advising Ministers on the ability to meet the timetable rested solely with the chief executive. To me, that sounds like a post hoc rationalisation, and as such, it is absolutely unacceptable.
One of our main concerns was that no lessons had been learnt—here I come to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). I think that we shall find out that in the Government’s response, they will say something like, “Many of the lessons learnt have been fed into the Department’s wider review of its governance of delivery.” There is precious little evidence that that is true, and I am dubious about it. Perhaps I am an old pessimist, but I can foresee, in similar circumstances, a repeat of the problems that we saw with the RPA and other major systems, and I think that this Department, and other Departments, will not learn from the lessons that can be learned.
We had two serious concerns, which lay at the heart of the RPA saga. The Chairman of the Committee referred to one a moment or two ago.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con): Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the question of accountability, which I think he is about to, I ask him to suppose that the Government’s response to our extensive, trenchant and highly public criticisms of Ministers in the report were to be something along the lines of, “The accountability and responsibility of Ministers are set out clearly in the ministerial code. The Government does not believe that there is any need for further guidance.” If the response were as short as that, would he agree that that was a disgraceful failure to address the trenchant, important criticisms made by a Select Committee, and would bring the Government into some disrepute?
David Taylor: I would be surprised if the Government’s response were along the lines the hon. Gentleman suggests. If it were, I am sure that when we discussed the response in the days to come, we would want to go back to the Department, and perhaps the Minister who is here today, for clarification, because it would seem to stand at odds with some of the new principles espoused by the new Prime Minister a few days ago. I hope that our Committee would do just that.
Any response along the lines of, “Many of the lessons learned have been fed into the Department’s wider review of this Government’s delivery,” would be surprising. If the Government then went on to say that their arrangements should be fit for purpose, we would all give a weary sigh at such a cliché. The phrase “fit for purpose” is a substitute for analysis and thought, and a poor one at that. Let us hope that the response does not say that.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |