We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.Defra refuses ombudsman call for SPS compensation
DEFRA has been criticised for failing to accept a recommendation to pay thousands of pounds in compensation to farmers for the maladministration of the Single Payment Scheme.
In a report published today (Wednesday, December 16) the Parliamentary Ombudsman has called on the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) to pay £5,500 to one farmer and £3,500 to another in recognition of the ‘stress, anxiety and financial impact’ suffered. She also recommended that the agency should send a ‘personal written apology’ to the farmers.
Ann Abraham’s report was laid before Parliament on the day the Public Accounts Committee also published a report slating Defra and the RPA’s handling of the scheme.
It sets out the results of her investigation of two representative complaints about the RPA’s administration of the 2005 SPS. These two complaints are representative of twenty two other complaints made about the scheme.
Ms Abraham said her report, entitled ‘Cold Comfort’, shows what happened to individuals who ‘sustained an injustice due to RPA’s mistakes’.
She described her remedies as ‘modest, particularly set against the overall cost of the Single Payment Scheme’.
Yet Defra is refusing to accept her recommended compensation levels and is instead offering to pay just £500 by way of apology to the farmers.
“My recommendations go beyond what Defra believes is appropriate,” Ms Abrahams said in her report.
“Important principles are at stake here. My view is that an appropriate remedy should be forthcoming where injustice has been suffered as a consequence of maladministration by a public body.
“It also saddens me that a public body refuses to provide relatively modest financial remedy for substantive injustice to people whose complaints have been referred to the Ombudsman by Members of Parliament and which the Ombudsman has upheld following an independent investigation.”
In the report, Ms Abraham said the failures of the 2005 SPS ‘took a direct personal and financial toll’ on the two farmers.
“My report shows that the RPA was unable to keep its timetable for handling the digital mapping of land or for making payments to farmers.
“But RPA continued to tell farmers that it would keep its payment timetable, when it knew, or should have known, that the timetable was increasingly unrealistic. In the language of the Ombudsman’s Principles RPA failed to get it right, to be customer focused, or to be open and accountable.”
A Defra spokesperson said: “Successive Defra Ministers have apologised for the difficulties experienced by farmers when the SPS was introduced in 2005.
“Those affected also received interest, where this amounted to £50 or more, in lieu of compensation where payments were made after the legal deadline.
“The Department agrees with the Ombudsman that a personal apology should be sent to the farmers covered in her report along with a consolatory payment where justified. This will now be done.
“However, it remains of the view that there is no basis for making further payments related to estimated financial losses.”
