Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-188)
MR DAVID
FURSDON AND
PROFESSOR ALLAN
BUCKWELL
8 MAY 2006
Q180 David Taylor: This was in conventional
ways with copies that you have retained for your records?
Mr Fursdon: Yes, we would have
copies on the file. I am not aware that we actually mentioned
it in written correspondence with Ministers, although when I took
over from Mark Hudson the two of us went together to see Margaret
Beckett and discussed various things, amongst which was the RPA,
which we expressed as one of the items put forward.
Q181 Chairman: Let me pin you down
again on a point of detail. It would be very helpful to know when
you went to that meeting, because officials will have taken a
minute, no doubt, about that and it would be very interesting
to find out, because you may not remember yourself, covering a
large canvas of issues, exactly what the Secretary of State said
at that time, but it would be very helpful for us to know when
you went to see her?
Mr Fursdon: What I know is that
at that particular meeting she was much delayed and so we were
waiting; one or two of her other Ministers were there and she
came in. What I cannot remember, without the notes and I do not
know that I have got enough detailed notes, was quite which bit
was covered with Ministers while we were waiting for her and which
was covered with her when she arrived. I can look in the diary,
and if you would like a date certainly I can give you a date.
Q182 Chairman: That would be helpful.
Professor Buckwell: Can I just
clarify, that the real concerns about the pace of processing did
not well up, so to speak, until autumn, October/November; that
was when we realised that it was not going well and that was when
all the arguments about partial payments started. Prior to that,
the anxieties were about delays in announcing specific implementation
details, so if we have given the impression that there was a lot
of niggling long before autumn last year, it was about the fact
that we had not announced what a farmer is for transferring entitlements.
I have got a list of about 30 of these sorts of issues that were
running for months where we could not get an answer.
Q183 Chairman: It would be very helpful
to have that list. The reason we are asking all these questions,
and you put your finger on it, which was why I started inquiring
about your understanding of the IT system, if you are going to
get an IT system to do something you have got to tell it what
to do, and resolving the questions that you have just described
is key to it. Being able to let IT people then build that into
the software requires decision-makers to have decided, and I am
anxious to know who knew what, where and when. If we are to get
to the bottom of how this occurred, we have got to know when the
decisions were made and how long the IT people then had to write
it into the software and the operating procedures and to make
it work. That is why we are asking these questions. It would be
also very helpful, in that context, if you were willing to share
with us your correspondence with Johnston McNeill and any others
that you think are relevant, so that we may see how they were
reassuring you against a background of the facts that are now
emerging?
Mr Fursdon: I am happy to do that.
Q184 Chairman: Thank you. I just
want to move on very briefly to something you touched upon earlier,
which was inquiring with your German counterparts. Are you still
awaiting some feedback from them, because one of the questions
that we would like an answer to is, if they have adopted what
appears to be a not dissimilar dynamic hybrid model, they have
managed to pay, as you said in your evidence, 80% of the money
by the end of last year? I gather, from conversation with some
colleagues in the Bundestag that we had here last week,
that it has not all gone absolutely perfectly, but at least their
farmers have got their 80%, whereas a large number of ours are
still waiting. Have you had any feedback as to how they have done
it and we have not?
Professor Buckwell: The short
answer: no, but certainly we will pursue that and we will share
it when we get it.
Q185 Chairman: That will be extremely
helpful, because we are always interested to know how other people
manage to do it when we hiccup. Would that also incorporate some
commentary on the mapping system; what I am not clear about, in
the case of the Germans, did they use the same digital approach
that we have had to follow? I would like just to ask you, almost
en passant but nonetheless very important, because a lot
of what you have been talking about is about the flow of information
from people who provide answers, systems, solutions to the needs
of Defra, to their Ministers, and in the Natural Environment and
Rural Communities Bill Defra takes powers to itself to be able
to subcontract to other agencies some of its duties, and I wonder
if by any chance this debacle over the Rural Payments Agency has
caused you to reflect upon the power that Defra now has?
Mr Fursdon: From my point of view,
it has not specifically, because I think until you actually see
what is happening and who is doing what you do not focus on it,
necessarily. I made a comment, which was a very general comment,
just now, which is that so-called partners, or so-called stakeholders,
are ostensibly part of the process but in reality are not. They
are seen as a possible contributor at some stage but ultimately
the inner sanctum then decides. I think that how that plays out
with other organisations which may be delegated the powers to
deal with these will depend on how they deal with the organisations
that they come into contact with. I would sincerely hope that
they would not deal with it in quite such a sort of `them and
us' way, as we have seen through this.
Professor Buckwell: I think it
is an extremely good question, because this is the issue of the
Government's approach to divorced strategy and policy from implementation.
There are clear, potential arguments for it, which is specialisation
of the delivery agencies and efficiency, but when it goes wrong
it goes spectacularly wrong. Of course, if the policy is not well
designed, because the people making the policy are so out of touch
with the delivery and therefore with the customers and the people
on the ground, then you run into problems. For example, the Regulation
that we are working from does not even appear to have any concept
of the way land is managed in the UK and the short-term crop licensing
and grazing agreements which are absolutely common, which it appears
that nobody, when this Regulation was being designed, said or
had any effect in saying "We'd better take into account the
way the British land tenure works." You slightly suspect
that was because they did not know, rather than that they tried
and failed to get this into the Regulation. They talk about six-year
tenure periods, which we do not have, so that when there is a
lack of understanding of the way farming operates on the ground
amongst those who are charged with making the policy then it becomes
pretty damned difficult to implement.
Mr Fursdon: We could have told
them; that is what I am trying to say.
Q186 Chairman: Who are "they",
in this case?
Mr Fursdon: In this case, it could
be Defra, who are charged with looking at systems of land tenure
and how you might implement these Regulations. Rather than to
come rather late in the day and say, "Oops; how do we get
out of this?" if they said, "Can we just check that
we've got the land tenure systems right?" then that would
be an easier thing to do, and I suspect that CAAV will have something
to say on that.
Q187 Chairman: In summary, you are
saying that Defra does not really understand, in the context of
the Single Farm Payment scheme, the way in which land is operated
in a number of different scenarios that you have described in
the United Kingdom?
Professor Buckwell: I would have
thought it was not unreasonable that, on the day that the Regulation
comes out, which mentions a new phrase in tenure arrangements,
land at the disposal of a farmer for 10 months, Defra would have
an answer to how that fits in.
Mr Fursdon: Farm scheme arrangements,
farm business tenancies, whatever else there may be.
Professor Buckwell: Last year,
it took 10 months to clarify that, of constant badgering by us
as to how those systems were going to operate within this Regulation;
but, of course, poor old RPA is just waiting for the answer.
Mr Fursdon: That is not to say
that there are not Defra lawyers that might have some of this
at their disposal, maybe not all of it, but what tends to happen
is that they are not connected up to the people who are actually
dealing with the implementation of the Regulations as they come
in, and it is not spotted quickly enough, so that actually when
the design stage is coming through people have not necessarily
got their heads round the implications for this country of some
of these Regulations.
Q188 Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you
very much indeed. I wish we had an infinite amount of time. I
am sure there is even more information to elicit. If, as a result
of the line of questioning that you have been kind enough to assist
us with this afternoon, other points occur, other than those which
you have kindly committed yourself to supplying some further information
on, the Committee would be delighted to hear from you. We are
disciplining ourselves that when it comes to sorting out this
mess we do not have to rush to get our answers out at the sacrifice
of thoroughness, in trying to get to the bottom of how this problem
occurred. To pick up, Mr Fursdon, on a point you made on a programme
that you and I appeared on, we certainly also do not want to do
anything to slow up the payment to farmers, and I hope you will
accept that we have designed our inquiry to that objective?
Mr Fursdon: I noted that you had
done that, so thank you very much, it is much appreciated.
Chairman: Thank you both very much indeed.
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