We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.NFU 2010: Tories pledge RPA ‘shake-up’
THE Rural Payments Agency would face a fundamental shake-up if the Conservative Party came to power.
Nick Herbert, Shadow Defra Secretary, told the NFU conference he would put his Farming Minister at the helm of the beleaguered Agency ‘with whom the buck would stop’.
“The RPA has been a complete disaster,” he said.
“Yet no Minister has ever accepted responsibility for what has happened. It is time for a fundamental shake-up,” he said, indicating Jim Paice, Shadow Farm Minister, would take the unenviable role.
Defra is currently running a review of the RPA after the National Audit Office accused it of gross mismanagement that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.
But Defra Secretary, Hilary Benn said the Agency’s operations had already improved markedly.
“You told me about the problems at the RPA. I did something about it and in December I had a completely new experience – two emails from farmers saying ‘Thanks’ for the cheques that arrived in the first week of the payment window,” he said, adding the RPA was on track to deliver its 90 per cent payment target by the end of March.
Nick Herbert didn’t buy Mr Benn’s explanation and went on to criticise ‘the armies of rural bureaucrats that have been recruited into quangos under Labour’.
“There are 8,000 civil servants working for Defra but 28,000 officials working in the 67 quangos under Defra. We can’t go on like this,” he said.
The Tories said they would scrap the Agricultural Wages Board and review all other quangos, most notably Natural England, to cut out needless inefficiencies.
Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat agricultural spokesman, also called for ‘a cull of Defra agencies’ and a reform of the RPA to benefit farmers.
“Through restructuring of the RPA we would reallocate funds to support a £7 million hill farming apprenticeship scheme to ensure that our uplands has a strong, vibrant and youthful future,” said Mr Farron.
Readers' comments (7)
Anonymous | 25 February 2010 12:48 pm
The number of people working in the quangos is totally disproportionate to the numbers of farmers. There is so much reporting and checks done by too many agencies eg. Natural England, Rural Payments Agency & Environment Agency doing similar checks that could be done as one?! These organisations are so inefficiently run.
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Anonymous | 25 February 2010 3:10 pm
The quangos should be structured in such a way that they benefit farmers, the countryside and nature conservation and with the least amount of bureaucracy.
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Anonymous | 25 February 2010 3:51 pm
The previous two comments seem to miss the fact that some significant restructuring has already taken place to make these agencies more efficient and better able to benefit farmers, the public and the environment - in 2006 Natural England was created from three separate bodies - The Countryside Agency, English Nature and Defra's Rural Development Service, so that's already a few less!
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Anonymous | 25 February 2010 4:13 pm
I think for starters everyone is jumping on a bandwagon of this 'quango attack' without much knowledge of what these organisations actually do and the issues the staff actually put up with in their jobs. Taking the one most people seem to attack (Natural England), they actually help not just the farmers but also the urbaan communities too. For example, NE has funded several projects to get greenspaces in cities and to get people out in the reenspace, farmers and countrysoide around them. This is something that is aiming to save taxpayers money being spent on obesity issues with the NHS. This is just a small part of what this organisation does for thge UK and do bear in mind it gets funding for all its environmental stewardship and other projects from the EU so it is not a simple matter of tax payers nmoney and if we lose these organisations we lose a lot of EU finding towatrds our Environment. I do agree that several bodies doing checks seems a bit much but there are reasons beihind this (for example the RPA have to check because they are the ones providing the funding, then NE need to check what the RPA find because sometimes the farmers have an issue with waht has been reported by the RPA).
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Anonymous | 25 February 2010 4:22 pm
Re: the creation of Natural England, all 3 successor bodies appear to be alive and well within the new one. NE's staffing head count quite probably exceeds the sum of the 3 predecessor bodies as well.
Re: the quangos, due to the red tape involved, the total admin cost of each £ delivered to farmers is probably another £ if not more. Checks, double checks, triple checks and then checking the checkers ....
There has got to be a better way ...
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Anonymous | 26 February 2010 8:25 am
Whythe attack on Natural England - where do farmers think their ELS payment comes from? The tooth fairy? All of the checks are insisted upon by the EU, who are providing the funding and safeguarding the taxpayers interests.
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Anonymous | 3 March 2010 7:12 pm
An FOI request has revealed that the RPA’s Chief Executive was paid £40,000 in expenses see link. What planet does this guy live on? He should be the first person shown the door in RPA.
http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/RPA-boss-faces-check-163-40-000-expenses/article-1865078-detail/article.html
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