Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
160-161)
DEPARTMENT FOR
ENVIRONMENT, FOOD
AND RURAL
AFFAIRS AND
RURAL PAYMENTS
AGENCY
Q160 Chairman: Dame Helen, a last question
for you. We obviously cannot wait for the outcome of another review;
tell us how you are going to sort out this mess for the next three
months.
Dame Helen Ghosh: As I half said
earlier, we have Deloitte working in particular on the overpayment
issue but also other elements of financial management, including
FRS23. We will take action as we go along. In particular in relation
to the three-month review, we will come back to the Committee
with the outcome of that review in the three months that we promised
and with an action plan for how we are going to recover, or adjust
as appropriate, the conclusions that we reach.
Q161 Chairman: A last question for you,
Mr Cooper. Normally I deprecate parliamentary committees criticising
named civil servants, but this is clearly a very serious situation.
Do you wish to say anything in your defence before the Committee
publishes its Report?
Mr Cooper: As I have already said,
we have made a lot of progress since 2005-06. I am comfortable
with that progress which has been made. Where we have not given
sufficient attention is to overpayments.
Chairman: Thank you. To sum up, the Rural
Payments Agency's administration of the Single Payment Scheme
for paying EU grants to farmers has been a master-class of misadministration.
The £304 million additional staff costs, £280 million
set aside to pay the European Commission and £38 million
overpayments—a massive £622 million in total—are
unlikely to be recovered and all fall to the taxpayer to pay.
And we have still ended up with a clunky patched together IT system.
Initially farmers, many of whom rely on the payments, were paid
the wrong amounts late; the Agency then had to claw back the millions
of pounds which had been overpaid. Because of its shoddy bookkeeping,
it does not actually know the extent of these overpayments which
could be somewhere between £55 million and £90 million.
Thank you very much.
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