Embargoed until 00.01am
on 16 December 2009 : Ombudsman reports on Rural Payments
Agency's maladministration
Issued by the News
Distribution Service on belhalf of the Parliamentary and Health
Service Ombudsman
Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, called on the Rural
Payments Agency (RPA) to apologise and pay compensation for the
maladministration of the Single Payments Scheme in a report laid
before Parliament today, entitled: Cold Comfort: the
Administration of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme by the Rural
Payments Agency.
Problems with the 2005 Single Payment Scheme have been in the
public domain for some time. What the Ombudsman's report
adds now are her findings of what happened to individuals who
sustained an injustice due to RPA's mistakes.
The report sets out the results of the Ombudsman's
investigation of two representative complaints about the
administration of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme by the Rural
Payments Agency, part of the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (Defra). These two complaints are representative of
twenty two other complaints made about the 2005 Single Payment
Scheme in England.
In the report Ms Abraham said:
'These failures of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme took a
direct personal and financial toll on the two farmers whose
complaints I have investigated.
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 keeps 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....'
The reader of this report will see that the remedies I have
recommended are modest, particularly set against the overall cost
of the Single Payment Scheme. But my recommendations go beyond
what Defra believes is appropriate.
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.'
Defra have not accepted the Ombudsman's recommendations
in full.
A summary of the report is attached to this release.
Notes for Editors
1. In 2005 the Single Payment Scheme based on land area replaced
the previous production-based system of farm subsidy within the
European Union. Farmers in England receive about £1.6 billion a
year under the Scheme.
2. The National Audit Office has issued three reports on the
Single Payment Scheme in October 2006, December 2007 and October
2009. The first report by the National Audit Office on the Single
Payment Scheme (October 2006) included research that revealed,
among other things, that delayed payments had been a source of
increased stress for 20% of the farmers surveyed.
3. The management of the Single Payments Scheme was reviewed by
the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
and the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts.
4. Ann Abraham holds the post of UK Parliamentary Ombudsman and
is also Health Service Ombudsman for England. She is appointed by
the Crown and is completely independent of Government and the NHS.
Her role is to provide a service to the public by undertaking
independent investigations into complaints that government
departments, a range of other public bodies in the UK, and the NHS
in England, have not acted properly or fairly or have provided a
poor service. There is no charge for using the
Ombudsman's services.
5. The Ombudsman welcomes the Public Administration Select
Committee's (PASC) December 2009 report Parliament and
the Ombudsman. In their report PASC draw attention to the
constitutional issues when the Ombudsman takes the exceptional
step of issuing a report indicating that the Government is failing
to take steps to remedy injustice she has found it has caused.
6. For other media enquiries please contact the PHSO Press Office
on 0300 061 4996. The full report is available to download at: www.ombudsman.org.uk.
The full Report and Summary can also be viewed as attachments
on the NDS website by going to the following link:
http://nds.coi.gov.uk/Content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=409589&NewsAreaID=2&ClientID=403
Contacts:
NDS Enquiries
Phone: For enquiries please contact the above department
ndsenquiries@coi.gsi.gov.uk