The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-15844, in the name of Alex Fergusson, on rural affairs. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak button now, or as soon as possible, and I call Alex Fergusson to speak to and move the motion. Mr Fergusson, you have 14 minutes or thereby.
14:40
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
Well, what a difference a well-timed Scottish Conservative debate and an impending election can make. [Interruption.] It is a little early for Mr Swinney to get so excited.
Finally, at the last moment, the Scottish Government has magicked up £200 million to ensure that, according to its own press release,
“any farmer or crofter who has not received an instalment”
of their basic payment
“by the end of March”
will
“receive a nationally funded payment from the Scottish Government in April”.
It would be churlish not to welcome that stunning change in direction on the basic payment, even if it played havoc with my beauty sleep last night as I had to largely rewrite my speech.
I welcome the announcement, and I welcome it warmly. I also have to point out in passing, however, that the cabinet secretary originally assured Scotland’s farmers and crofters that they would receive the entirety of their basic payment by the end of April. That now seems to be unreachable, and the cabinet secretary would do himself and, indeed, the industry a lot of good if he would just come out and say so. At least people would then know exactly where they stood. All they know right now is that, if the cabinet secretary’s plans are carried through—and we have yet to hear any details of how those April payments will be made—all farmers and crofters will have received a percentage of their due payments by the end of April, which is a far cry from his original assurances.
The panic button has been well and truly pressed. I just hope that, this time, the cabinet secretary can deliver. Yesterday’s announcement certainly followed the recent trend of last-minute announcements that a cynic might think was designed purely to deflect growing criticism. First, we had the announcement of a £20 million last-ditch loan fund at the NFU Scotland annual general meeting—a meeting that had previously promised to be fairly tempestuous. Last week, in the face of growing pressure about the timing of the less favoured area support scheme payments—not least in this chamber just two weeks ago—the cabinet secretary announced that he would make national funds available to ensure that those payments, worth £67 million, would be paid in March as usual.
Now, faced with this debate and a rally outside Parliament tomorrow, the cabinet secretary has waved his magic wand and found the money from national funds to deflect the growing crisis once again. No wonder that, yesterday, Mr Lochhead was able once again to smile in the chamber—that was nice to see—following weeks of growing and justified criticism. It is as well for Mr Lochhead that his colleague Mr Swinney, sitting on his left, appears to have such deep pockets when it is expedient to do so. That opportune announcement may deflect immediate criticism, but it will not make the underlying problems disappear, and we need to look at just how we have arrived at this sorry state of affairs.
It was on 11 June 2014 that the cabinet secretary made the eagerly awaited announcement on how the new area-based common agricultural policy support system would operate in Scotland. It was in many ways a truly momentous announcement, because it moved us away from a support system based largely on productivity to one based on area alone, which, in a Scotland in which 85 per cent of land is classified as less favoured, presents no small challenge. What that change would bring about was essentially a massive shift in support payments away from the south and east of the country to the north and west—a truly great challenge indeed.
Thanks to the eminently sensible decision of the United Kingdom Government to negotiate Scotland’s ability to design and implement a CAP support system that was tailor-made for Scottish conditions, the responsibility for that system lay solely and squarely with the Scottish Government from day 1.
Will the member give way?
I will later, if I have time.
How to best mitigate the most damaging impact of the reforms had been the subject of intense discussion, debate and consultation over many preceding months, and they continued right up to the 59th minute of the 11th hour, as various sectors within the agricultural industry made their case for special consideration. Indeed, I recall meeting the cabinet secretary along with Tavish Scott to discuss the concerns of the beef breeding sector on the very eve of the cabinet secretary’s announcement. Clearly, the final decisions were made at the very last minute.
The eventual outcome, as detailed in the cabinet secretary’s announcement in June 2014, was thought to be a genuine effort to please everyone by—as the cabinet secretary put it at the time—fitting square pegs into round holes.
The problem with trying to please everyone, as I said at the time, is that one can end up pleasing practically no one. That is pretty much what seems to have happened, when we look at where we are today. Despite yesterday’s announcement, the whole regime is in disarray. It is an unfortunate situation that remains 100 per cent of the Scottish Government’s making.
Will Mr Fergusson specify the bits of the arrangements that were put in place and approved by the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment that he would have done differently?
I am coming to that, because we do not need to look any further than the new information technology system that the cabinet secretary commissioned to operate the new regime. The warnings were there for all to see from the moment that the single application form window for applications opened in March 2015. In fact, we now know that industry experts were issuing warnings about the likely problems in mid-2014, but the Government had other priorities on its mind at that time.
From the outset, those who were trying to use the online application system reported extreme difficulties, describing it as unfit for purpose and totally flawed in many respects. I vividly recall being taken through the process by one agent, and I could only agree with his frustrated assessment that it would have been far better to have reverted to a paper-based application process—something that I would have considered doing—which is what later occurred. That is exactly what the United Kingdom Government did, in an action that was much derided by the cabinet secretary but which resulted—surprise, surprise—in farmers south of the border being furnished with paper forms that were pre-loaded with the previous year’s information, thereby enabling applications and payments to be made on time.
Furthermore, the delay allowed technicians to get on with building a system that I believe is now fit for purpose and ready to receive 2016 applications. That is what I call a sensible plan B, and it appears that the Scottish Government simply did not have one. Every time that the cabinet secretary was challenged about the problems, he repeated that the changes in Scotland were really complex and that staff were working round the clock to overcome the difficulties; that is emphasised again today in his proposed amendment to our motion. I am sure that staff worked hard—I do not doubt that—and that the system was indeed complex. However, I repeat that it was—and still is—a system that was designed, implemented and signed off by the cabinet secretary alone, and the responsibility for that system and its failures rests with him alone.
The IT problems remain to this day. A system that was supposed to cost less than £90 million has already cost more than twice that amount, and is forecast by some to end up costing approximately £300 million. If so, it would represent a staggering amount—between £15,000 and £16,000—for every application that the scheme will process. That is totally unacceptable from the taxpayer’s point of view, and surely it should be totally unacceptable from the Scottish Government’s point of view. Such a shambles cannot just be put down to complexity.
As members may have read in last weekend’s Sunday Times, considerable controversy surrounds the whole IT project, which began back in 2013. The former delivery director is quoted as saying that the blame lies with the “poor work ethic” of the staff and contractors who were in post when he was brought into the project.
Others, including some of the aforementioned staff and contractors, point the finger of blame at that delivery director and his company, Spectromax Solutions, through which 87 new contractors were hired for the project, many of whom—it is alleged—were on tier 2 visa contracts, replacing some of the 180 original staff who had been removed and sidelined from the project.
I have no idea of the rights and wrongs of those assertions and allegations, but I know a subject that merits a full, open and independent inquiry when I see one, and this is surely one such subject. My colleague Mary Scanlon will say more about Audit Scotland’s on-going investigations, but—as our motion suggests—we would strongly support calls for such an inquiry if Audit Scotland’s final report leaves unanswered many of the questions that surround this embarrassing fiasco.
Those questions are for a later debate, but the immediate consequences of the fiasco are too important to leave until later. They demand immediate attention, as the cabinet secretary finally recognised yesterday afternoon. The reality of the failure to pay the first instalment of the basic payment to the majority of claimants by the end of January, as the cabinet secretary had assured the industry would be the case, is a £300 million black hole in the rural economy. That comes against the backdrop of a 15 per cent fall in total farm income in 2015, which in turn follows an 18 per cent drop in 2014.
If we add to that the significant drop in their CAP support payment—more than 50 per cent in some cases—that most farmers in the south and east of the country will experience and are experiencing, we can understand why so many people in the industry remain angry and distressed, despite yesterday’s announcement. Some £300 million is not circulating in the economy as expected and as budgeted for.
I am sure that the cabinet secretary will say that the payment window is open until June, but I remind him that he alone raised the expectation that most farmers would receive their money by the end of January. That expectation has been well and truly dashed. It is also worth pointing out that although some 54 per cent of farmers had received their first instalment by the end of last week, only about 25 per cent of the actual money has been paid out.
An old and established fact has well and truly come to light: if farmers do not have money, they do not spend money. We need only talk to machinery dealers, fencers, drainers, feed merchants and the host of rural businesses that are needed to support the sector and which do so much to feed the rural economy, to realise that farmers are not spending right now. Indeed, not only are they being denied £300 million, but most of that sum is by now, I suspect, having to be borrowed from banks at commercial rates of interest, which adds further costs to the individual businesses involved.
Why does any of that matter? As long ago as 1998, a report by Dr Ronald Wilson, of the University of Edinburgh, highlighted the effectiveness of direct subsidies to farmers as a principle driver of the rural economy. The findings of that report are as relevant today as they were in 1998.
If the findings of that esteemed report on the importance of direct payments to farmers in Scotland are as relevant today as they were many years ago, why did the Conservatives try to scrap direct payments during the negotiations in Brussels a couple of years ago?
The cabinet secretary will be aware that we are in Scotland now and dealing with—
Ask for powers to be devolved, then.
Order.
The cabinet secretary cannot just deflect criticism of his handling of the system by looking at the UK Government. He knows full well that my party will support his Government and other parties against decisions that are made by the UK Government, if necessary, as we did on the convergence uplift. Let us concentrate on the point in hand, which is his responsibility, rather than something over which he has no control.
The findings of Dr Wilson’s report are as relevant today as they were when the report was written, but the rural economy has been and is being starved of core funding to the tune of some £300 million, due to the Scottish Government’s inability to deliver CAP support.
Until yesterday, the cabinet secretary’s only reaction had been to offer a £20 million loan of last resort if the banks refuse to extend an individual farmer’s overdraft facility while the farmer is waiting for their payment. I suggest that very little of that money would be taken up, first, because the banks, to their credit, appear to be applying considerable sympathy to the sector when it comes to extended borrowing, and secondly, because any farmer who is refused further bank credit in such circumstances must be in imminent danger of becoming insolvent, and the last thing that such a farmer will need is further indebtedness.
I suggest to the cabinet secretary that he draws down that money and puts it into hiring the extra staff who are clearly still required to sort out the IT system. That is the best way in which he can restore faith in his Government’s ability to deliver. Such faith has been massively eroded over the past few months.
It is not as if the cabinet secretary’s problems are going to go away in the near future. It has been clear for some time that there will be considerable delays to other payments, further down the line. I am told by the most reliable of sources that the IT programme to process the Scottish suckler beef support scheme, on which the cabinet secretary will make an advance payment in April, has not even been written yet.
Pillar 2 schemes all face extensive delays, and a considerable negative impact will be felt by, in particular, new entrants and young farmers, who are hampered by a complete lack of information about their circumstances.
Yesterday’s panic-induced announcement will not solve any of those problems, which still need to be sorted out, and quickly.
The cabinet secretary has successfully bought off long-term criticism of his grip on the basic payment scheme, but the underlying problems that led to that criticism remain. As we approach the opening of the next single application form window, he needs to make certain that this scandalously expensive system is sorted out once and for all or abandoned, if necessary. Perhaps he secretly hopes that that is one legacy item that he can leave to his successor.
I move,
That the Parliament acknowledges the financial difficulties facing Scottish farmers following the delayed payment of common agricultural policy funds as a result of the Scottish Government’s failed £178 million Futures Programme IT system; understands that only 50% of farmers had been paid by the end of February 2016, notwithstanding the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment’s assurances that “most” farmers would have received their payments by the end of January; notes that this is the third indicative deadline that the Scottish Government has failed to meet; recognises that current payments to farmers represent only a quarter of the available basic payment and greening funds; believes that these delays have left the rural economy facing a financial black hole of some £300 million; recognises that farmers across the country have lost trust in the ability of the cabinet secretary to deliver funding before the end of the financial year and supports calls for a full independent inquiry into the Scottish Government’s IT failures; notes that Scottish farm income has fallen by 15% over the past year, which is only the second time this century when incomes have fallen in two consecutive years and, as a result, calls on the Scottish Government to take whatever steps are necessary to process the outstanding £300 million of basic payment and greening funds and the £38 million of Scottish beef scheme funds, including the hiring of temporary staff if necessary; commends the Scottish Government for having taken steps to ensure that less favoured area support scheme payments are received promptly, and calls on the Scottish Government to guarantee that all claimants will receive the first instalment of their basic payments by no later than the end of March 2016.
I call the cabinet secretary, Mr Lochhead, to speak to and move amendment S4M-15844.3. Cabinet secretary, you have 10 minutes—we are tight for time today.
14:54
I very much welcome the opportunity to debate what is an important subject for rural Scotland—and the whole country—and to discuss the implementation of the new common agricultural policy, which supports our farmers and crofters to put food on our tables and manage our landscapes and in turn helps the downstream industries to sustain jobs.
As I said at the NFUS annual general meeting last month, farming is facing a perfect storm. Unfortunately, the bad weather that we have experienced over the past 12 months and unfavourable market conditions have coincided with the biggest CAP reform ever. That is no exaggeration: never before have both pillar 1 and pillar 2 of the policy been reformed in the same year. Not a single scheme from the previous CAP—in either pillar—has come through unchanged into the new policy. Every one of the old schemes has been changed or replaced by a new scheme—or sometimes by more than one new scheme.
Over 2015, the Government launched about 20 schemes across the whole CAP, which are being taken forward this year. Some of those schemes are radically different from their predecessors, not least that which relates to the biggest reform—the allocation of about £400 million on the basis of a business’s land area rather than historical activity. On top of that, we have greening and the new rural development programme.
That is why it was essential for us to engage deeply and in detail with our stakeholders from the very beginning of the reform process. Throughout that process, the industry in general and the NFUS in particular gave us—the Government and the negotiators—a very clear message. They were adamant that the top priority was to get the right policy outcomes. After all, decisions that were taken in the most recent reform will determine how the CAP operates for many years to come.
After a lot of discussion and negotiation, we finally agreed with the industry that we needed new activity rules to halt and phase out the scourge of slipper farming. That move was supported by all parties in the Parliament. We agreed that, as part of the new basic payment scheme, Scotland should be split into payment regions with different payment rates for different types of land, in order to deliver the right level of payments to the right places. That move was widely supported by all the political parties in the Parliament.
We agreed that coupled support or headage payments must be extended to the sheep sector and that we should look after the needs of beef producers—particularly those on our islands, where the payment rate would be different. I remember that that, too, attracted widespread support in the Parliament. Finally, we agreed that we must not repeat the mistakes of the past, when unlucky new entrants found themselves frozen out of payments for the life of the previous CAP reform.
We spent many months developing those policy details with stakeholders. Like, I am sure, most people—except Alex Fergusson, given his speech—I believed then and firmly believe now that they were the right decisions to take. Europe imposed on us a complex new policy that covers greening, the move away from historically based payments and so on, and our decisions here in Scotland, which were taken jointly with industry and supported by the Parliament, added a lot more complexity on top.
The timescale for getting those decisions implemented was tight. For pillar 1—or direct payments—the EU did not adopt the main regulations until about a year before the new schemes had to start, and the detailed rules came later than that. For pillar 2—the rural development pillar—the situation was even worse. Strictly speaking, the new Scottish rural development programme should have started on 1 January 2014, but Europe had not even set out all the rules by then. It was only because of the transition arrangements, which the Scottish Government fought for, that we avoided a disastrous gap between rural development programmes.
In the light of that timescale, we made it very clear to stakeholders that the extra policy details that they were asking for—and, in some cases, insisting on—would inevitably affect payments to some degree, at least in the first year. After all, in the first year, we have a new system being implemented for the first time and many one-off tasks to undertake. We all knew that achieving the same timetable as applied under the previous CAP was a tall order but, as I said at the time, we were determined to get payments out as early as possible within the seven-month payment timetable window that Europe had laid down. As the industry has acknowledged, we all knew the risks, but we all agreed that they were worth taking.
In light of the cabinet secretary’s point about the seven-month payment timetable, will he confirm that every crofter and farmer across Scotland will receive their full CAP payments by 30 June?
That is absolutely our determination, because we want to avoid fines from Europe. If we do not have 95 per cent of payments made by 30 June, we are potentially subject to fines, which is not in Scotland’s interests. We will make every effort to avoid that.
As I said, we agreed that the risks were worth taking, but I completely understand the difficult position that farmers and crofters find themselves in now because of the poor prices and extreme weather that we have experienced in recent months. I said at the Royal Highland Show last year that, although we would do everything possible to get payments out as soon as possible, this was not a normal year and farmers should be prepared for that. I also discussed the issues with the banks.
Does the cabinet secretary think that, had we had better weather and better prices, the shambles of the IT system would have been more acceptable? [Laughter.]
Order.
If Mr Fergusson speaks to any farmer or crofter in Scotland, they will tell him that those are serious issues that have affected their cash flows. He might find that a laughing matter, but many businesses out there are suffering right now because of those issues.
We have been working tirelessly. We started paying the first instalments in December. We have now made basic and greening payments to more than 10,500 farmers and crofters, which are worth about 80 per cent of their total payments, whereas our initial target was to make at least 70 per cent. About 59 per cent of farmers and crofters have been paid as of today.
However, we have not been progressing as expected and, as I have said many times, that is deeply disappointing. Where we are is not good enough, and for that I apologised to the industry. The IT system is working, but not anywhere nearly as quickly as we all want, and I fully accept that.
Under the EU rules, we have to complete detailed checks on every claim before we can authorise payment, and it is only after payments are made that the EU reimburses us. The IT system has to validate each and every claim against 400,000 fields and more than 500 EU rules. I ask members to just think of that for a second: every claim involves 400,000 fields and more than 500 EU rules. Officials are constantly having to improve the IT system—which we are using for the first time and which Europe said that we had to build and implement—to speed up the process and unblock cases. We have drafted extra staff into our offices and our IT teams have been working day and night.
As I have said before, ministers absolutely believe that we have to learn lessons. We are co-operating with Audit Scotland, which will produce its report in due course, and we will support any subsequent inquiry. That is clearly a matter for the next Parliament, as the NFUS president rightly said this morning.
In the meantime, the absolute priority is to get the payments out the door. In particular, getting the whole of Scotland sorted into three payment regions has been a massive challenge. Regionalisation was one of the huge problems that the Rural Payments Agency in England faced in the previous CAP reform, when things went disastrously wrong for it. I am told that, at the same stage as we are at now, the agency had paid less than 4 per cent of businesses. We are going through the reforms that England went through in 2005, plus another set of reforms. In Wales, this time, the Government could not find a workable regionalisation model at all, so it abandoned the idea.
Here in Scotland, many key players in the industry were absolutely insistent, for good reasons, that there had to be three regions and not the two that the Scottish Government originally consulted on. We have been working hard to deal with those challenges and to get the payments out the door. In the meantime, in light of the rate of progress and the challenges that farmers face, we have been taking decisive action.
As Alex Fergusson mentioned, I announced the cash-flow scheme for farmers and crofters who are facing severe hardship. I also announced the national LFAS scheme for hill farmers, under which payments will begin later this month. It will inject £55 million into many of the more remote and fragile areas of Scotland. In addition, we announced that the payment of coupled support for the beef sector will be accelerated to mid-April to match last year’s timing, and yesterday we earmarked up to £200 million of national money for a national basic payment scheme—similar to the LFAS scheme—to get payments in April to every eligible farmer and crofter who has not had a first instalment by the end of March. That is on top of the £115 million that has already been paid out since payments started in December.
My amendment reflects those important steps. It also points out the irony of the Conservative Party’s position. The fact that we are weeks away from an election might have made the Tories suddenly realise that direct payments are vital to Scotland but, if the issue was left to them, farm payments would be abolished. That is not just pillar 1 payments; LFASS has already been abolished in other parts of the United Kingdom. It has to be said that that is also the Labour Party’s position. If it was up to those parties, we would not be talking about late payments; we would be talking about non-existent payments.
The Government will continue to defend farming and crofting in Scotland and to work flat out to support the sector through these tough times. I urge Parliament to support the Government’s amendment.
I move amendment S4M-15844.3, to leave out from “the financial difficulties” to end and insert:
“that the common agricultural policy (CAP) currently being implemented is the most radical and ambitious ever, with unprecedented simultaneous reforms to both Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 of the CAP requiring around 20 schemes to be launched during 2015 and the introduction of greening measures and three payment regions; notes that the timetable of EU negotiations and decisions left administrations with a short timescale in which to implement such radical reforms; welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government engaged comprehensively with stakeholders during the development and negotiation of the policy, and that both stakeholders and the Scottish Government agreed that securing the right policy outcomes for Scotland was the priority even if this risked impacting on the timing of payments within the 1 December to 30 June Pillar 1 payment window; notes that the Scottish Government had issued over 10,000 payments worth around 80% of basic and greening payments to 56% of eligible farmers and crofters as of 7 March 2016; acknowledges that, at the same time as the transition to the new CAP, farmers are facing additional difficulties due to market trends and unfavourable weather and therefore welcomes the announcements of steps by the Scottish Government to accelerate basic payments to farmers using Scottish Government funds and the national less favoured area support scheme expected to deliver payments to the vast majority of eligible farmers and crofters by the end of March 2016; commits to learning lessons from the implementation of the new CAP, and supports the continuation of CAP payments as one of the benefits of Scotland’s continuing membership of the EU”.
15:05
We certainly welcome yesterday’s announcement of a £200 million funding package, however late in the day it was, but it is vital for lessons to have been learned and for confidence to be fully re-established for next year’s payments. It is troubling that, even today, the cabinet secretary could not give Tavish Scott a straight or definitive answer about when this year’s payments will have been made by.
NFUS president Allan Bowie has said:
“For months, NFU Scotland has been looking for focused thinking and clear leadership from the Scottish government to resolve this farm payments crisis for the benefit of the whole rural economy.”
Our amendment would add text that focuses on next year. We have known for months that the Scottish Government’s IT system was not fit for purpose, so that should not be a shock to anybody. I thank the whistleblowers who came forward. Scotland is a small country, so they took a personal risk in being prepared to tell it like it was.
In a series of answers to freedom of information requests and a host of answers that colleagues across the chamber have had to parliamentary questions, the failures in the system have been laid bare. Worryingly, that has raised more questions than have been answered—about issues such as failures of procurement and the management and development of the system.
It was clear from the evidence to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee last June that agents, farmers and farming representatives knew that the system was not working. From the start, the Scottish Government failed to get to grips with that fundamental issue. There has been chaos for our rural industries and complacency from the cabinet secretary for months. We have seen that in the repeated reassurances that have come to naught, days or weeks after they were given. That led to the unusual situation of the committee asking for weekly updates, which have laid bare the failure to make the CAP payments. The situation has been a long time in the making.
The impact is uncertainty in our industries, which were already under pressure. In the past 12 months, our farmers have had to endure a perfect storm, with turmoil in the markets, market failures for different products and crops, the flooding experiences and the weather last summer. We do not expect the Scottish Government to fix the short-term weather, but it could have done much more to support our rural communities and to make the industry more resilient for the future. That is why, for the past few weeks, we have been calling for automatic payments to be made. It is why our amendment raises the issue of payments that farmers have had to make to banks for interest incurred specifically as a result of the delays that have occurred, despite the reassurances that the cabinet secretary gave.
Our amendment refers to the dairy industry, which is in crisis. Many farmers are already teetering on the edge. That is not just because of the CAP payments fiasco, although that is a crucial issue for them. Some farmers whom we have spoken to are now asking whether it is worth continuing, which is a desperate state of affairs. Although we welcome the 11th-hour action, it is the hallmark of the Scottish Government to sit on a problem for months and then act at the point of crisis.
We are talking about how we move forward. When I spoke to farmers from the Lothians last night, what came across from every one of them was massive uncertainty. They gave me information about the Royal Scottish Agricultural Benevolent Institution, which is an important rural charity that is dealing with the financial pressures and stress. Many farmers have not been able to get credit from the banks, so they have put all their money on the table. Others have gone into huge debt, with great instability for their businesses for the future. Alternatively, the supply industries—whether that is the seed suppliers, the machinery suppliers or the logistics industries—have taken the hit.
That is not publicly obvious but, when we speak to the rural communities that are affected, we find that the problem is clear and urgent. Our rural communities have been put on hold, and there is worry and anger. We need clear accountability and clear commitments on action for the future.
It is good that an Audit Scotland report is to be produced, but that will come after the May election, so there will not be accountability. That is why our amendment asks the cabinet secretary and his officials to issue a statement on what will happen next. Farmers and crofters will soon be submitting forms for the 2016-17 process. Will those forms be paper forms or electronic forms? No one has any confidence in the system, because of its complexity.
The issue that has not been addressed over the past 12 months is the reality of the situation in rural Scotland, where we do not have broadband connections that can cope with the complexity of the cabinet secretary’s system. We know that the system fell down last year as people submitted their forms. We have not had the beginnings of a reassurance on such basic practical issues. We want a commitment on that and we want accountability before the Parliament dissolves for the elections.
There is an issue with the procurement and management of the systems. The processes must be laid bare. We need to find out what went wrong with the Scottish Government’s IT system. It is not good enough for the cabinet secretary to blame everybody else. The failure of the project is truly scandalous; it has put in jeopardy our farming, our crofting and our rural communities.
We need to move forward for the future. Money is now on the table, but we need to have confidence in the process for 2016-17. Our cabinet secretary must tell us how next year will be different and, to date, he has not even begun to address that.
I move amendment S4M-15844.2, to insert at end:
“and to compensate farmers for interest incurred on loans that have resulted from the Scottish Government’s failure to make payments as planned; expresses concern about the 2016-17 payments and calls on the Scottish Government to issue a statement before the dissolution of the Parliament as to what changes will need to be made to ensure that next year’s payments process will be ready in time; further notes the continuing crisis in the dairy industry, and calls on the Scottish Government to take further action to ensure the survival of the industry across the country.”
15:11
I, too, welcome the £200 million fund that the Scottish Government announced last night, which is to be spent on crofters and farm businesses across the country, but I suggest that that should have been done months ago. Why did the Government not take decisive action earlier?
The French Government paid a 70 per cent instalment to its farmers in October from national reserves. The French knew then that they had processing problems with a new system, just as Scotland does, so they invested to help agriculture. Here, the cabinet secretary claimed that all was well. As late as 10 December, he was declaring that
“most people would get an advance by the end of January with payments starting in December”.
None of that happened.
Will the member take an intervention?
No.
Questions remain, and they are big questions. Can the Scottish Government guarantee that the £200 million will reach farmers and crofters before the end of April? Worryingly, the cabinet secretary could not tell Parliament that all farmers and crofters will receive their full CAP payment by the 30 June deadline. If he can do that in his winding-up speech, I will be absolutely delighted. Why should any farmer or crofter believe that a failed IT system that cost £200 million will make payments of £100 million in March and April when it has paid out only £103 million in the past three months? We would all appreciate an answer to that.
How are farmers and crofters meant to submit a single application form by 15 May when they do not have a final entitlement letter, never mind a balancing payment? That has never happened in all the years of devolution. What provision has the Government now made for the EU fines that will inevitably follow?
The failure of the Government’s £200 million IT system is nothing short of a national disgrace. Last night’s decision was taken because farmers and crofters from Shetland to Galloway are to lobby Parliament tomorrow. They have not stopped—they are still coming. Yesterday, the First Minister faced what can only be described as a shellacking from the NFUS. She had listened to the cabinet secretary defending the indefensible yesterday morning, and something had to be done. Last night, the Government changed its position, and rightly so. It is just as well that the First Minister finally understood that telling farmers that they should be grateful to be paid in June, as she did last Thursday, was not acceptable.
Why did the Government not make this decision earlier? It could have made it in January or February or, as the French Government did, it could have made it last year.
Will the member take an intervention?
I want to make some progress. [Interruption.] If Mr Swinney wants to stand up and answer the questions that I have asked, I would be quite delighted to give way. He makes many interventions from a sedentary position.
If farmers and crofters receive their instalments in April—and it is a big if—that will be four months later than the cabinet secretary promised. He also promised full payment by the end of April, not just a percentage.
Why is it a £200 million fund? The total CAP budget for Scotland is £400 million. As of this week, the Government has paid only £103 million, so where is the other £100 million? Is the cabinet secretary telling Parliament that the busted IT system will manage to make £100 million of payments before the end of April although it has failed to do that in the past three months?
People who know have told me that the IT futures system crashed yesterday. It could not make any payments. That has happened time and again. Anyone who has been in touch with the local department offices in any part of Scotland knows the reality of what has been going on. Therefore, farmers and crofters will find it extraordinary that the Government still believes that that IT system can work. Why does the Government not just come clean with all of us—Parliament and agriculture—and admit that the computer system does not work and will never work as intended? The Government should ditch it now.
I also ask the cabinet secretary to answer the following questions for agriculture. As he said, LFASS will be paid this month. He is right to make that happen but I am told that it will be done using the old payments system. Is that the only system that is now working in the cabinet secretary’s department? Which IT system will be used to pay the beef and ewe hogg payments that he mentioned in his speech?
Crofters grants are also late. They have not been late before, but they are late now. I have constituents who have not been paid on agricultural sheds because of everything that has been going on. I can give the cabinet secretary case after case on that. When will they be paid? People who are waiting for money—it is their cash flow—want to know. Neither the local department office nor national Government can tell them. Why is all that happening?
Crofters, farmers and NFU Scotland want a full, independent inquiry and rightly so. Audit Scotland is poring over all the incompetence and chaos but will report only in May. How much money has Spectromax Solutions made in supplying staff to the Government?
Audit Scotland will no doubt be followed by the EU auditors. Penalties, I am sad to say, appear certain. Who will pay those fines? Will they come from the CAP budget or somewhere else?
Audit Scotland will also report this month on the opening of the next single application form. We will wait to see what the auditors say, but will the cabinet secretary agree now to extend the 15 May deadline for single application forms, given that most farmers and crofters throughout Scotland simply do not know what they are doing for their cash flow for next year, never mind this year, because of what has happened?
The policy questions need to be answered by a wider inquiry. I will finish with a point about the hard-working Scottish Government staff in the local department offices on whom farmers and crofters depend in my and the cabinet secretary’s constituencies. They have been let down by their superiors. If I was a senior civil servant who was responsible for the disaster, I would be apologising not only to Scottish agriculture but to my staff.
I move amendment S4M-15844.1, to insert at end:
“; notes the impact on the agricultural supply chain of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) delays, with merchants, vets and machinery supplies also among those being financially affected, and that store livestock prices have fallen as a result of the delays causing considerable pressures on primary livestock producing areas, notably in the crofting counties; further notes delays to other agricultural grant schemes, such as the Crofting Counties Agricultural Grant Scheme and the Scottish Rural Development Programme, and recognises the hard work and dedication of local Rural Payments and Inspections Division officers across Scotland, who have endeavoured to make their part of the BPS system function”.
15:18
To try to put some perspective on what has been going on, we should consider a couple of quotations. Today, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association produced a news release headed “CAP Relief Package Should Not Be Marred by Political Posturing”:
“Many tenant farmers anticipated payment delays in their forward budgets. As tenants, they are at the sharp end unable to use rented land as borrowing collateral but the extremely wet winter and low commodity returns have undoubtedly heightened the need for prompt CAP payment delivery”,
said Chris Nicholson, the STFA chair.
On the LFASS payment, the chief executive of the Scottish Crofting Federation, Patrick Krause, said last week:
“The Scottish Crofting Federation very much welcomes this initiative. A lot of crofters will be really pleased to hear payments will be made by the end of March, as LFASS is so important to us. It is great to see the Scottish Government is being so creative in finding ways to ease crofters’ cash flow concerns during this difficult time.”
However—[Interruption.]
Order.
What we have here is a motion that starts to discuss the problem that we face. Alex Fergusson’s motion
“notes that Scottish farm income has fallen by 15% over the past year, which is only the second time this century when incomes have fallen in two consecutive years”.
That issue is being conflated with the issue of CAP payments.
For a start, I will dwell on the first issue. In my experience in this Parliament we have been held to ransom by the UK Government, which failed to put in place a competition commission through which we can hold the supermarkets and the middlemen to account. Christine Tacon, the groceries code adjudicator, does not have the powers to intervene on behalf of producers.
The Labour Party, the Liberals and Tories, and the Tories to follow them each failed to take the farmers’ side and make sure that our people get decent prices for their products. As far as I am concerned, that is right at the heart of the problem that Scottish agriculture faces just now.
It was the Liberals who introduced the groceries code adjudicator when in Government down south and who are calling for the groceries code adjudicator to have further powers right across the supply chain.
Well, we are awaiting that with great interest.
In the meantime, because our farmers have less support and are getting lower commodity prices, they failed to get the £180 million that Scotland was due from the CAP. It might have helped our producers a little bit if they had got from the CAP settlement what was their due right.
We also see, over our heads, that the agriculture department of the UK Government is split between those who want to be in Europe and those who want to be out: Liz Truss wants to be in, George Eustice wants to be out. There is no certain sound from there to back us up. Indeed, the cabinet secretary has already talked about Westminster’s experience of trying to make CAP payments and the mess that they got into in 2005. The difference now is that we cannot go back to paper calculations; we have to use a computerised system. That is what the European Union said.
NFUS representatives wrote to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee about our legacy paper. They said that:
“Food sufficiency in Scotland and the UK”
was a high aim, including:
“how to promote local food and better procurement; developing supply chains and collaborative projects with UK and EU partners designed specifically for exports, with tools to review successful food exports.”
How do we deal with that situation and make sure that our agriculture can meet those goals, if we do not have a system in place in London that backs us up?
People may tell us that we have a difficult land in which to grow crops and to raise cattle and sheep, but the point is that if the London Government had been in any way interested in making sure that that happened, it would not have allowed us to be underfunded for a start, and it would have offered extra means to help us to provide the payments.
Will the member take an intervention?
The member is in his last minute.
We are talking at the moment about the cost of the IT system. The actual cost of the computerised system is 4 per cent of the whole cost over this particular CAP period. If anyone thinks that they can set up something as complex as that, in as simple a fashion, that is purely political posturing. I have heard far too much of that already, and many of my other colleagues will make sure that they tell it as it is.
The farmers and the crofters out there know that the Scottish Government is right behind them. They will make sure that we are a success. It is very unlikely that many of the other parties, who look to London for their bosses and their ideas, will do the same. London did not give us competition safety and, as far as I am concerned, we can see exactly how hypocritical the other parties’ attacks are right now.
15:24
I am pleased that the Conservatives have chosen the important issue of rural affairs to be debated in their time.
The Scottish Government’s failure to timeously pay farmers their basic farm and other payments has caused great concern among my constituents—not just those who are directly involved in farming, but also those who appreciate and rely on the enormous contribution that farming makes to the economy and the environment of Dumfriesshire.
Anyone who listened to “Good Morning Scotland” yesterday will have heard several of my constituents—Robin Spence, who is a beef farmer from Lockerbie; Robbie Dalgleish, who runs an agriculture-related business in the town; and Andrew and Aileen Marchant from Thornhill, who are new entrants to sheep farming—speaking about the effects that those delays in payments were having on them, their colleagues and the local economy. I therefore welcome the remedial action that the Scottish Government has eventually decided to take.
We are told that the problems are due to the Government’s new IT system. Public sector-commissioned IT is, of course, notorious for overspend and underperformance, so the Government should have been prepared for problems. In particular, it should have been alerted as there were problems in the system last year.
In April 2015, I contacted the cabinet secretary on behalf of the Eskdale sheep farmer Dianna Staveley, who had tried for almost a month to complete her single application form online. Despite the much-appreciated assistance of staff in the Dumfries office, she was continually locked out of her account. In reply to my correspondence on her behalf, the cabinet secretary advised me that
“the account had become corrupt for some unknown reason”,
but that the problem had been corrected. Mrs Staveley subsequently advised me that it had not been corrected and that the system was still reverting to the previous errors. Mrs Staveley presciently commented in her email to me:
“Frankly the system, although possibly expensive, is too complicated and not fit for purpose”.
That was the conclusion of a sheep farmer who described herself as “not computer brilliant”. She seems to have been rather more computer brilliant than the Scottish Government.
A further letter in reply from the cabinet secretary on 30 May last year advised that
“there was a defect identified on our Rural Payments and Services system”;
that he was
“committed to ensure that our new systems continue to improve”;
and that “customer feedback” would be “taken on board”. So much for those words of reassurance. Ten months later, the system is still not fit for purpose. Did the cabinet secretary or his officials check what progress was being made in improving the new systems before he promised that most farmers would receive their first payment by the end of January?
Complacency and blaming others are, of course, the hallmarks of the Government. I listened to the cabinet secretary on “Good Morning Scotland” yesterday trying to pass the blame over to the EU for the complexity of the new payments methodology along with the need to tailor it to the specifics of Scottish farming. However, the new CAP regime was hardly a surprise. It was discussed for several years prior to implementation, and the new regime was agreed by the EU in 2013. In fact, the Scottish Government consulted on implementation of the new rules in December of that year. The new pillar 1 direct payments, basic farm payment and the greening payment came into force in January last year. Surely there must have been time either for the IT problems to be resolved or for alternative back-up plans to have been put in place. Can the Government advise what actions it has taken since last year? Did ministers just cross their fingers and hope for the best?
Anyone who dares to suggest that the Government might in any way be responsible for anything that goes wrong under its watch is immediately accused of whingeing from the sidelines. That monotonous refrain is constantly repeated by the First Minister and her party, and that accusation will doubtless be levelled at Opposition members again today. However, the failure to meet the promises that were given to Scotland’s farmers and crofters comes at a particularly difficult time, particularly for dairy farmers, who are suffering from the record low price of milk.
As a member of the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee in the previous session of Parliament, I was a member of a dairy summit that was first convened by the cabinet secretary in 2009, which is over six years ago. What did that achieve for the dairy industry in Scotland? It seems to me to be just as bad as it ever was, if not worse. Farmers could not be blamed for thinking that that was all just words and that there was just a desire to be seen to be doing something. No wonder they have little faith in politicians.
The Scottish Government is fortunate that it deals with stoical Scottish farmers. Tavish Scott mentioned the French. French farmers would not just have threatened to demonstrate outside Parliament; faced with those problems, they might have blockaded the place and poured milk into the ministerial petrol tanks.
I know of a couple of constituents who went in desperation to their bank to ask for help at the end of last year. Their dairy farm had been in the family for generations and they had kept going through foot-and-mouth disease, but they had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the milk price and the Government’s incompetence in getting their pillar 1 payments for them. They were considering throwing in the towel. How many other farmers have considered abandoning farming altogether? I hope that yesterday’s announcement came in time for my constituents and any other farmers or crofters who are facing the agonising decision about whether to give up the living and lifestyle to which they have devoted so much time and work.
Perhaps the cabinet secretary could explain how he has got round the issue he referred to in yesterday’s “Good Morning Scotland” broadcast when he said that he would not be able to access EU funds if the applications had not been verified. Within the space of a few hours, that problem seems to have been resolved.
The Scottish Government should apologise to Scotland’s farmers and crofters, and it should, as the Labour amendment states, cover the interest costs of the loans that farmers and crofters have been forced to take out in order to survive.
15:30
There is no doubt in my mind that none of us in the Parliament or around the country wants to see the agricultural industry where it is today. We are seeing falling beef prices, rock-bottom dairy prices, other commodity prices dropping, supermarket price wars, the wettest winter on record, and of course the delayed CAP payments, all of which has helped to create a perfect storm, as many have said.
Our farming industry is a vital part of our economy and our society, and it is right that it gets the support that it needs to thrive. While the complications of a new IT system have led to extremely regrettable delays, the fact is that the Scottish National Party is taking real action to protect farmers. That was proven last night with the announcement that the Scottish Government will use up to £200 million of national funds to provide cash support while CAP claims are being processed, as well as ensuring that the LFASS payments are made on time. There is also the new £20 million hardship fund—the Scottish Government-backed loan scheme, which, thankfully, might not now be utilised to the full thanks to last night’s announcement.
The current perfect storm is clearly not a good position to be in, but it is not the first time farmers and crofters have faced difficulties in an industry that has had more than its fair share of difficulties in the past.
Will the member take an intervention?
No. I need to get on.
The Tory motion before us today is nothing short of political opportunism and posturing. While I recognise that the current situation is far from ideal, it is incumbent on all political parties to rally together during difficult periods, not turn on each other, which sadly seems to be the case today. However, it has to be said that it is quite spectacular hypocrisy from the Tories to try to score political points over farm support when their own UK farming minister is set on seeing that support abolished in its entirety by dragging Scotland out of the EU.
The truth is that the Tory Government has refused to give our farming communities any information about the future of the support payments that they will receive if we are out of Europe. The Tories in Scotland have to come clean about their own farming minister’s plans, and I hope to hear more about their post-EU-membership plans in their summing-up speeches today. I doubt that we will, somehow.
Will the member give way?
I need to get on. Time is limited.
Members: Oh!
Order, please. It is up to members to decide whether to take interventions.
While I hoped for more constructive criticism from the Tories, sadly I am not so surprised by the conduct of the NFUS, particularly its leaders, in recent days and weeks. We have come to expect scathing criticism from the NFUS leaders, but their most recent utterances really take the biscuit.
I am glad that the NFUS leaders had the good grace to welcome the Scottish Government’s announcement last night, despite having a selective memory and attempting to rewrite history. In an attack on the Government over LFASS payments that questioned the Scottish Government’s assurance that the £65 million in payments would be delayed by only a few weeks, Alan Bowie, the NFUS president, said that he did not believe the Scottish Government. I was glad to see Alan Bowie proved wrong with last Thursday’s announcement that LFASS payments will be made on time. Implying that the Scottish Government is lying over LFASS is far from helpful, but it is sadly typical of the rhetoric coming from the NFUS in recent weeks.
In complete contrast, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association welcomed the action taken by the Government, with the STFA chair, Christopher Nicholson, stating:
“Farmers across Scotland will be pleased to hear that the Scottish Government is making plans to ensure that the vast majority of LFASS claims will receive a payment by the end of March with most getting 90% of the previous year’s claim. This will provide vital liquidity to Scottish agriculture at a time when farm cashflows are under pressure.”
STFA’s warm welcome for last night’s announcement and its warning that the CAP relief package should not be marred by political posturing are welcome.
The NFUS would do well to remember that the CAP payments system has been made more complicated by its insistence on the inclusion of three payment regions and not two. At its insistence, 400,000 fields in Scotland have been newly assessed into three payments regions rather than the two that were originally proposed. The NFUS accepted in October last year that that could lead to a delay in payments, but it was considered to be a risk worth taking.
NFUS president Allan Bowie said in The Scottish Farmer on 30 October last year:
“Yes, we knew and were told that more complexity would increase the risk of payments coming later. That was a risk we judged, the industry judged, was worth taking”.
Former new entrants leader Jim Simmons said that the union had—I quote—an “absolute bloody cheek” pointing the finger of blame at the Scottish Government. In The Scottish Farmer on 23 October last year, he said:
“I clearly remember former chief agricultural officer Drew Sloan with his head in his hands saying all of the NFUS demands would lead to significant complexity, and inevitable delays”.
He continued:
“In short the NFUS were at the root of the cause of these delays, were warned what their demands would mean to the timescale of payments, were told to warn their members of the delays, and now have the absolute bloody cheek to start nipping at the government.”
The Scottish Government was clear to the NFUS all along about what it would mean should it grant the NFUS’s wish for a more complex system. It is perhaps worth noting as an aside that the Scottish Crofting Federation has always advocated a two-region system, which would have been far simpler and would have favoured crofters.
Will you close, please?
Although the Scottish Government clearly has to shoulder some of the blame for what we hope are temporary inadequacies of the new computer system, the NFUS should acknowledge some responsibility for where we are today, but I doubt whether it will do that.
I appreciate that the member was quoting, but I ask members to be careful about the language that they use in the chamber.
I understand that Mary Scanlon is making her valedictory speech. We were both new members of a new Scottish Parliament in 1999. On behalf of the Presiding Officers team, I wish Mary all the best for the future. [Applause.]
15:37
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thought that I would keep the tears until the end.
I thought that that was a shameful speech for Angus MacDonald, the son of a crofter from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, to make. He should be ashamed of himself. The crofters will certainly not be dancing in the streets of Stornoway tonight after hearing that.
The Public Audit Committee has been looking at Audit Scotland reports on the Government’s IT systems, particularly for farm payments, for some time. There is no political posturing and absolutely no hypocrisy in any of those reports.
I start with Audit Scotland’s 2012 report on Registers of Scotland. Its IT costs went up from £66 million to £112 million, which represents a £46 million overspend. The Government has form, and much more has been spent since then. Audit Scotland stated:
“Effective ICT is essential to allow public bodies to deliver services that are more timely, coordinated, less bureaucratic, and to improve their efficiency.”
We can all agree on that, and that is what every farmer, crofter and politician wants today. However, the report stated that
“a lack of specialist skills and experience ... contributed to a lack of understanding”,
and Audit Scotland added that
“The Scottish Government was unable to provide”
Registers of Scotland
“with all the advice and support”
it sought. That was the Scottish Government’s fault.
Audit Scotland said that the roles and responsibilities were not clear. It asked for
“effective governance and risk management arrangements”,
“robust performance management arrangements”,
“detailed skills assessments”,
strategic reviews, gateway reviews, better monitoring, a lessons learned exercise and steps to address inadequate risk management. Did the Scottish Government do that? No.
The Scottish Government was also told that it should
“compare the costs and benefits of investing in skills ... against the risks of failing to deliver ICT”.
In other words, it should spend taxpayers’ money investing in success rather than waste it on paying for failures.
It is all there: the problems; the analysis; and, most importantly, the solutions. The Government responded. It carried out a skills review, and it only took it two years to do so. Then it had an action plan for a central Government IT workforce, and it piloted the Scotland-wide area network IT programme, otherwise known as SWAN, which paddled away with another £70 million overspend on the farm payment system, along with a £50 million overspend on the NHS 24 system, which is still not working.
The Audit Commission’s 2015 report said that
“Information Systems ... did not have sufficient information”,
did not receive information from central Government and
“did not have the staff to pursue the lack of information.”
It also says that the Scottish Government was still finding it difficult to access skills. I just want to remind the Government that it is also in charge of education and training so, if there is a skills shortage, it is responsible.
The recommendations in 2012 were totally ignored.
That brings me to “The 2014/15 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”. There has to have been a serious failure before the Auditor General includes someone in that document, but here we are: serious concerns expressed by the Auditor General about the Scottish Government’s CAP payments.
I want to put on record the fact that the £78 million overspend is last October’s figure. I am aware that staff have been seconded from as far afield as Shetland to try to sort out the situation. The Public Audit Committee is getting an update by next Monday—not after the election, because that committee works well—and I can say that we will see that the overspend will be a heck of a lot more than £78 million.
I lay the blame fairly and squarely on the Scottish Government, and on Richard Lochhead in particular. I might have just a little respect for ministers if they would stand up and take just a little bit of responsibility for their actions.
This is my last speech and is probably the hardest to do. First, I want to thank my wonderful son and daughter for their support and forbearance. I want to thank everyone in the Highlands and Islands who gave their second vote to the Scottish Conservatives and placed their trust in me. It has been a great privilege to represent the Highlands and Islands in four sessions of this Parliament and to see so much of the amazing and stunning country that we live in.
Having been brought up in a tied cottage, where my father worked, and having left school at 15, I never dreamed that my life circumstances and sheer hard work would bring me here. I thank the Scottish Conservative Party. It has tolerated me through thick and thin over many years.
I remember the opening of the Parliament, when we marched down the Royal Mile in alphabetical order, and I was marching in between Alex Salmond and Tommy Sheridan. I do not think that any of us could forget that opening day, with Sheena Wellington singing, “A Man’s a Man for A That”.
I thank Sir Paul Grice and all the Parliament staff, because they are so thoroughly professional. I particularly thank our security staff. I think that they are just amazing.
I still feel excited about coming here. I still feel excited about going to committees. I have never forgotten the great privilege it is to be here and to be a public servant. I still read all my committee papers, and I always turn up half an hour before every committee meeting. I have enjoyed every minute of the Public Audit Committee, and I thank Hugh Henry and Paul Martin for their management of it.
I thank all MSPs for their friendship, and I acknowledge the commitment of members of all parties in this chamber to serve the people of Scotland.
I would particularly like to thank my pal, Christine Grahame. There are not many cross-party friendships, but I hope that ours will endure.
I have to remind Mary Scanlon that this is a revenge intervention. During my very first speech in this Parliament—my maiden speech—Mary Scanlon intervened on me with such devastating impact that I vowed that I would never speak again. I have been practising ever since.
Revenge, indeed.
Finally, I thank Ruth Davidson and my Conservative colleagues for their friendship and their support over the years. They are the best bunch of people I have ever worked with, and I will miss every one of them. Thank you.
I call Michael Russell to be followed by Margaret McDougall. We need to try to stick to time, please.
15:45
I regard it as a privilege to speak after the last significant chamber intervention and speech from my friend—I think that I am allowed to say, with affection, my old friend, as I have known her for a long time—Mary Scanlon, who has made as robust, direct and memorable a speech as ever. I am very glad to be the next speaker in this debate.
For those of us who represent largely rural constituencies—or, in my case, rural and island constituencies—this debate is welcome, because it gives us the opportunity not only to address the problem but to put on record the many achievements of this Government in support of rural Scotland. That opportunity is welcome.
No one is pleased or proud regarding the present problems with the rural and agricultural payments system, but we should be very pleased that further work has been done, not least to guarantee the LFASS payments this month—which are crucial in my constituency—and also to provide an interim payment and safety net for any farmers who have not received moneys by the end of March.
The reason for the problems is somewhat more complex than presented by any of the Opposition parties. The hard work being undertaken to solve them—led by the cabinet secretary—is both more intense and more successful than any of them have acknowledged.
I am not alone in regarding some of the criticism that we have heard today as being somewhat misplaced, given that many of the critics inside and outside this Parliament have been cheerleaders for—in fact, some have been architects of—the very complex system that is being put in place, despite warnings from none other than Richard Lochhead.
It is tough for someone in the Government when the Opposition is baying for their blood. I know—I remember the sound of the hounds in pursuit. People begin to lose a sense of proportion. Hyperbole rules. Speeches are full of over-the-top demands, littered with unanswerable questions and bristling with indignation—as we have heard in one or two already—and they do no service to those of our constituents who have genuine difficulties and are suffering genuine hardship as a result of the issues.
Sometimes such hyperbole gets out of rational control and becomes something else. That is what happened this week with the involvement—salivating—of the Countryside Alliance. People can be tarnished by those whom they associate with, as Labour found out with the better together campaign. Having the Countryside Alliance on board was not an advantage to the NFUS leadership in its understandable and intense campaign, nor was the personalised and intemperate language used by Jim Walker last week.
There is something that the current NFUS president might like to reflect on. I say it as someone who gets on well with him and enjoys his company.
Will the member take an intervention?
I want to finish my point and then I will take it.
By all means, in the cause of effective representation, the NFUS president should bring pressure and feel anger—even indignation and fury. That is what he is there for. No one will criticise him for doing his job. However, he should avoid being used by those who have their own and other agendas, particularly at this time of land reform. That type of entanglement devalues his actions and damages his brand.
Rural Scotland is damaged by such language and by language that is already used by some in this chamber. Rural Scotland is not “on hold”, to use Sarah Boyack’s phrase this afternoon, and my constituents are ill served by that type of remark.
I give way to Mr McGrigor.
The head of the Young Crofters, Mr James Shewan, said in a newsletter:
“Discussion in the Young Crofters group has found that most of our members have not even received their Illustration of Entitlements, which shows how much they are due to be paid, let alone any money”.
Could you hurry along, please?
He continued:
“What impression does this give to any young crofters, but especially those on the fence about whether or not to take on the family croft?”
The problems exist; they are being solved. They are being solved by the work of Richard Lochhead, and that is what we should pay attention to.
That language alienates those who are doing the job. I had a phone call this week from a Kintyre farmer and NFUS member. He said, “Tell Richard Lochhead not to resign.” I thought, “I cannot tell him anything—he has never listened to me,” but I am sure that he would not have resigned anyway because he and this Government have made significant achievements in rural Scotland.
With a produce output of around £2.3 billion a year and around 65,000 people directly employed in the sector, it is Richard Lochhead who has worked tirelessly to get the best deal for Scotland’s farmers and crofters in Europe. He has introduced major and beneficial changes in agriculture tenancies and land reform, which we are completing in the next week. He personally wanted to drive forward the Scottish food industry, which is now valued at more than £5 billion, with 14,000 new jobs.
People have businesses and jobs because of Richard Lochhead’s work. The clean, green status of our valuable food industry has been developed and protected because there has been a policy to reject genetically modified food—a policy that he has led on.
I could go through a range of Richard Lochhead’s and the Government’s achievements. The key point is this: Richard Lochhead has been willing to be personally helpful on these issues to many members from across the chamber. I know that because I used to work with him and now I am one of those petitioners. Just last week, he helped the Bute dairy farmers with their transport costs again, something that was desperately needed. He has helped, too, with the milk industry because it has required his intervention.
There is lots of work still to be done—more work is required on the milk issue and on supermarkets. Richard Lochhead, I and others want to see more land reform; there is more to do on the food issue. In the legacy round-table discussion that the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee had last week, we talked about agriculture and the purposes of agriculture.
There have been problems but, when there are problems, it is the leadership of the cabinet secretaries and the Scottish Government that makes a difference.
Will you draw to a close, please?
That leadership has been seen in the past weeks and months and was seen again yesterday, so we should celebrate what is being done and we should be glad that work is being done to improve things. We should not be trying to capitalise on that; we should be following that lead and trying to help.
Thank you very much. I am afraid that we are incredibly short of time.
15:51
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate on rural affairs. I will use my time to discuss the CAP payments situation and the plight of dairy farmers.
The current situation with CAP payments combined with the spiralling costs of the IT system is nothing short of scandalous. The new IT system was meant to make the process easier and more efficient. Instead, there have been significant delays and a massive increase in cost. It is now expected that the total cost of the system will be around £178 million, which is 74 per cent higher than originally forecast.
The delays have had far-reaching consequences, with many farmers still waiting on their CAP payments. To date, only £100 million has been paid out of the £400 million. The most recent figures tell us that only 7,887 out of a total of 18,300 farmers have received their basic payment. The NFUS states that there is a £365 million financial black hole in Scotland’s rural economy.
A cash-flow crisis for farmers does not just affect farmers but has ramifications for businesses across Scotland. If one part of the chain stops working, the whole of Scotland’s rural economy could grind to a halt, which could have long-term effects on the sector. That is why I support Labour’s call for farmers to be paid as soon as possible. Although I welcome the Scottish Government’s announcement yesterday that it is going to pay out £200 million of Scottish Government funds to ensure farmers get some payments, in my view it is too little too late and, as always, the devil will be in the detail.
The IT problems and delays have been pointed out to the Government time and again, yet nothing was done until yesterday. The situation was entirely avoidable and we need to hear a statement from Richard Lochhead before dissolution, setting out clearly how he will ensure that payments are made on time in 2016-17 and assuring us that the situation will never be repeated. There has been a complete lack of action by the cabinet secretary until, it seems, his hand was forced by today’s debate. He should have been more proactive on the issue and he should have done everything possible to support farmers who are suffering because of this Government’s failure.
Another part of Scotland’s rural economy that is facing an uncertain future is that of the dairy industry. Having spoken about the industry before in the chamber, I will revisit it today as it will be my last chance before I stand down.
Last summer, I saw dairy farmers in Ayrshire protesting in local supermarkets over the price of milk, because they felt that no one was listening to them. When I spoke to dairy farmers in North Ayrshire, they told me that, at present, producing milk is a loss-making business. The situation does not seem to have improved; in fact, it is getting worse.
Yesterday, at a meeting with dairy farmers, we heard that the industry has been in free-fall over the past 12 months. Those who do not have a contract with a big supermarket are forced to sell milk at 14p per litre, with the threat of the price falling even further to 12p in spring. That has already had a huge effect on the 55 dairy farmers in Ayrshire, 15 of whom are looking to sell. Their yearly turnover has been halved and up to £11 million lost from the local economy. The situation needs direct intervention now. The current position is simply untenable, and the industry needs greater support to secure a long-term sustainable future.
The Scottish Government’s dairy action plan was launched last March and predicts that, by 2025, the industry will have increased by 50 per cent. That will not happen unless we get action now. Whoever is in government after the election needs to tackle that head on. For example, a regulatory body could be established for the dairy industry. Further direct intervention by the Government is needed and there has to be greater transparency across the sector. For example, why have milk prices fallen for farmers, yet supermarkets have not reduced the price of milk? We also need to look into the prospect of longer contracts for farmers and retailers to increase security in the industry.
Dairy farmers clearly face cash-flow problems and are at risk of losing their businesses and livelihoods. Given that we are at risk of losing the dairy industry in Scotland, it is time that they were given a helping hand.
That situation, combined with the CAP payment delays and IT issues, has the potential to bring Scotland’s rural economy to its knees, which would have massive consequences, not just for farmers but for all Scottish businesses that depend on the rural sector.
It is time that the Scottish Government stops playing catch-up, admits that mistakes have been made and lays out a plan to make it right. Anything less is a disservice to struggling farmers, not only in Ayrshire but across Scotland.
If members could take a little less than six minutes from now on, I will not have to cut the time for our final two speakers.
15:57
I am grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution to the debate. I recognise, as others have done today, the action taken yesterday by the Scottish Government to ease the situation caused by the delay in subsidy payments to Scotland’s farmers. The £200 million support package will come as a relief to many farmers in my part of Scotland, Ayrshire, and it is important to acknowledge that that help has been provided.
In my speech, I want to focus on the IT issue in some detail and see whether we might be able to uncover the real reasons why software systems can take much longer to implement than we would want.
The new IT system for processing assessments has come about principally as a result of requirements made by the European Union but also as a result of changes requested by the industry itself, including changing from two schemes to six regionalised schemes, and from trying to allocate each of the half million farmers’ fields in Scotland into one of three new payment regions using the half million EU rules that must be satisfied into the bargain.
It is said that people in glass houses should not throw stones. Some have rushed, predictably, to throw their stones at the Scottish Government, because it is the easy thing for some politicians to do when they do not understand the complexity of what is being demanded. For others, it diverts attention from their own role in the specification process.
Make no mistake, all Governments are, exposed to recurring IT issues. We can look back at the not-so-distant past and see some fairly spectacular examples of IT system failures at the heart of successive UK Government projects. Let us take a brief trip down memory lane. In 2011, there was the English national health service patient records fiasco. The project started in 2002, cost more than £12 billion and had to be discontinued. In 2004, there was the Child Support Agency IT disaster, in which nearly 2 million people were overpaid and nearly 1 million were underpaid after two totally incompatible systems clashed with each other. That cost nearly £1 billion, and for every £1 that was taken in payments it was costing 70p to administer the system.
In 1999, there was the failed IT passport registration system, when half a million new passports were delayed and thousands of holidays were cancelled. There was the Ministry of Defence’s failed recruitment partnering project, which cost more than £1 billion but did not work. There was the Border Agency’s IT system to manage immigration casework, which cost £750 million and was cancelled. The system that is currently being used to try to work out universal credit payments is still not working. It has cost nearly £13 billion, and it has now been outsourced. The list goes on, but I have been careful not to lay the blame directly at the door of the political parties that procured those multibillion-pound projects.
The cost of the system that is currently being developed in Scotland for our farming payments is a fraction of the cost of those disasters, and a fraction of the total value of the £4 billion payments that it will administer over the next seven years of the CAP.
Will the member give way on that point?
No—I want to get through a number of points, thank you.
There is something else going on here, and if we all look beyond the politics for an explanation, we might be able to see what it is.
Audit Scotland and the UK National Audit Office have been reporting for years that the fundamental element that is critical to any successful software public procurement project is the production of early, clear and detailed specifications for the actual requirements before project costings and implementation timescales are agreed. If you do that, you stand a good chance of success. If not, you run the risk of poor specifications leading to multiple changes and uncontrollable cost overruns.
If we pick through the embers of all those past IT disasters, I am sure that we will see the latter result replicated across most—if not all—of them. In our case, you cannot underspecify a complex IT system close to the date that it is required and then try to graft on more complex changes requested by partner agencies and still hope that it will all be ready on time. Warnings were given about that by the Scottish Government, but we are where we are. It would be like starting to build the new Forth crossing bridge using incomplete and late drawings and then changing the design as you go. Software is the same. If you give the software engineers proper specifications well in advance and do not change the plans too much, you will get a good system on time and on budget.
Why does the same thing happen again and again when we know what the reasons are? In my view, it is clear that all Governments—in Europe, the UK and Scotland—need to have strong IT systems professionals directly within and as part of the decision-making processes. They need to be allowed to go on the record with their advice on major IT systems development projects. Far too much of that expertise is outside all Governments, and the services are mostly procured commercially.
Will the member take an intervention?
No—I have said no thank you.
The member is approaching his final minute.
Why did the European Union proceed with the directive if the IT advice was that it was extremely high risk? It was probably because there was no such strong IT advice within the decision-making circles in European policy making. All that has to change if we are to have any hope of delivering large-scale IT projects on time and within budget in the future.
I am very proud of our cabinet secretary and his attempts to deliver an extremely complex requirement from Europe within tight timescales, and to accommodate the further demands from the industry. The demands were probably unrealistic, but a huge effort has gone in to try to meet them all. The cabinet secretary certainly does not deserve to be attacked for his efforts by those whose only contribution has been to make political capital rather than to invest some thinking in how IT systems can be delivered effectively in future.
16:03
Like most people, I am seriously concerned about the financial difficulties that are facing Scottish farmers and crofters following the delayed payment of the common agricultural policy funds. My constituency of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch has a great number of farmers and crofters—many of whom operate on the most difficult ground in all weathers—who rely heavily on those payments. They are struggling, and we must acknowledge that mistakes have been made that have resulted in financial hardship for my constituents.
However, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that those mistakes are quickly rectified and that the outstanding farm payments are made as quickly as possible. That is exactly what Richard Lochhead and his team have been doing, and they deserve credit for that.
I am very pleased that farmers and crofters who are still waiting for a direct subsidy payment at the end of March, just a few weeks away, will receive a cash advance directly from the Scottish Government, to tide them over. That follows the First Minister’s confirmation that the Scottish Government will provide £200 million from national funds, as members said, to support farmers and crofters while common agricultural policy claims are being processed.
That is good news, which comes off the back of the cabinet secretary’s recent announcement that national funds will also be used to ensure that farmers and crofters in Scotland’s most fragile and remote rural areas, who rely on less favoured area support, receive a payment in March, as usual.
The delay in payments has a knock-on effect. A constituent of mine, George McLaren, of McLaren Tractors in Dingwall, has been in touch with me to say that his business has been affected because farmers are not able to pay for equipment that they have purchased from him. I am sure that that is the case more widely. Indeed, as members said, all the strata around the farming community have been affected, including trailer workers, vets, delivery drivers and other people who are connected with farming. I feel for them all.
However, it is worth noting that, as members said and as some members want to deny, the NFUS insisted on the scheme with three areas that we now have, which made for greater complexity and added to the problems that we are facing. The NFUS was well warned but accepted that that was a risk worth taking. Indeed, NFUS president Allan Bowie said:
“Yes, we knew and were told that more complexity would increase the risk of payments coming later. That was a risk we judged was worth taking”.
The Scottish Farmer reported that on 30 October.
A number of people are playing politics with the issue. That is not unusual for politicians, but it is dangerous for bodies such as the NFUS to go down that road. An NFUS vice-president, who did not realise that I was the local MSP when he met me at the Black Isle show a year or two ago but who saw my Scottish National Party badge, started to make provocative remarks, clearly showing his own colours. He was not in favour of the party that I represent.
It is a free country.
Order, please.
The man was somewhat taken aback when he realised who I was.
It is ironic that the motion was lodged by the Conservatives—the very party that has argued for the scrapping of direct support to UK farmers and crofters. That is a view that Labour has also previously supported. The Conservatives also presided over the pinching of the pillar 1 convergence uplift—some €223 million, which was due to Scotland and came to the UK only because of Scotland. That leaves Scotland at the bottom of the league in pillar 1 euros per hectare. We wait in vain for news of the promised review and for a fairer allocation of CAP funds for Scotland.
Does the member accept that my party, along with other parties in this Parliament, opposed the UK Government’s position on the convergence uplift? Will he also accept my assurance that if the UK Government were to take steps to remove pillar 1 direct subsidies, we would oppose that, too?
Mr Thompson, you need to begin to close.
The member is quite correct but, unfortunately, this Parliament and his party, my party and any other party here do not have the power to stop that. I look forward to the member telling me that, when his party in London decides to do away with support for farmers, he will back independence, so that he and I can fight for Scottish farmers right here.
I am afraid to say that we are out of time and that, after Alex Johnstone, members will have only five minutes for their speeches.
16:09
It has been a very long time since I last spoke in an agriculture debate; in fact, it has probably been more than 10 years. First of all, then, I had better take care of the niceties and refer members to my entry of the register of members’ interests. I should further clarify that I take no income from any farming business that is in receipt of farm payments and have not done so for a very long time.
That said, I spent a considerable part of my life as a dairy farmer in a family business that used only family labour, working seven days a week to keep it afloat. That experience colours my attitudes; many of my family and indeed many of my friends are still in farming and have suffered as a result of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Although appreciated by many at the time, the decision made half a generation ago to collect the European agriculture funds together and pay most of them in an annual single farm payment had the effect of putting most of our eggs in one basket, with the risk that, if anything ever went wrong, problems such as those that we are seeing right now would arise. Indeed, the reason why I have not been asked to speak on agriculture for a long time now is partly to do with the fact that I am one of those people who believe that single farm payments are, at best, a necessary evil. I believe that Scottish agriculture’s value should be accrued from the marketplace, and the fact that we rely on single farm payments is in itself evidence of failure in many regards.
Nevertheless, we are where we are, and the Government is making policy changes that will affect many farmers in Scotland.
Will the member give way?
No, thank you.
The decision to move farm support from the south-east to the north and west has resulted in many farmers in my own area expecting payments that are only 50 or 60 per cent of those that they received only a few years ago. For many, though, those payments have not arrived. For nearly two years now, Richard Lochhead’s promises have appeared to indicate that everything is going smoothly and that there would be no problem; indeed, as recently as December, when payments did not arrive on the expected dates, we were assured that as many as possible would be made by the end of December and that most of the rest would be made from January onwards.
The fact is that many farmers have not received their payments, and the effects have been dramatic. The banks have been prepared to extend credit, but that increase in debt will be a burden on the farming industry, and it does not come without additional interest charges. Many rural businesses that trade with the farming community remain unpaid and know that they are at the end of a long payment chain that starts with the Scottish Government. Many businesses have incurred another winter’s feed costs—or certainly will have by the end of April. In other words, we are talking about two winters’ costs. As we move into spring, another year’s seed and fertiliser will have to be bought, and as a result, farmers will have to meet two years’ costs on the basis of less than one year’s income. Today’s promises on the less favoured area support scheme will reassure some, but trust is now at a very low ebb, and many farmers relying on that payment will believe it when they see it.
Many farmers, especially those at the beginning and at the end of their careers, will be influenced in their forward planning by their experience of this winter. They will become risk averse, and it is inevitable that in many areas we will see a slow contraction of the industry as confidence is undermined. In spite of the confident remarks that have been made today, land reform is also undermining that confidence.
We have heard the phrase “a perfect storm” used many times in the debate—I, too, have used it—but the problem is that this perfect storm has been one of policy failure and administrative incompetence. The result is that Scottish farming—and the Scottish countryside—is on hold: it is holding its breath in the hope that something will go right. The promises made today will hold out some further hope, but I have spoken to businesses that know that the status of their application is now marked “Application ready for payment”, and they are still waiting for that payment—the money has not yet arrived. In his closing remarks, I would like to hear the cabinet secretary tell us at least one fact: how long does it take to go from “Application ready for payment” to money actually appearing in the bank account?
16:15
I want to make a point to Alex Johnstone, who is a farmer. He talked about using the market and making sure that in the far future our farming communities and farming industry will not need so much help. However, we need to be very careful about that because this is not the time and place to have that argument. I ask him to make sure that, as Alex Fergusson said, we are all behind our farming industry and that we understand that the CAP payments have to be made.
I was delighted to hear Mr Fergusson say that he will oppose the UK Government, which is formed by his own political party, and support the SNP Government’s line on CAP payments. However, I did not hear a lot from Labour on that. We know that Alistair Darling said in 2008 that he thought that it would be a good idea to scrap the CAP payment to farmers. We need to be a little bit more united on that point.
At some point, members will have to accept that there is a Scottish Labour Party and that where issues are devolved, we have our own policy in Scotland.
We heard it here first: Alistair Darling is not part of the Scottish Labour Party—that is incredible.
It would be good if it is made very clear in the closing speeches that we all stand for farming and for making sure that farmers get help, whatever happens in the future.
As the First Minister said, and as the cabinet secretary has confirmed,
“We are less than halfway through the payment window allowed by Europe and the majority of Scottish producers, more than 10,000, have already received a subsidy payment. However, payments are not being made as quickly as we would like.”
With regard to what farmers and Alex Fergusson have said about the cabinet secretary, the cabinet secretary apologised at the NFUS AGM for what has happened. He did so clearly—we have all done that at meetings with the NFUS. I think that there has been a lot of honesty from our party in that regard.
The cabinet secretary’s confirmation that the announcement to help farmers will also enable payments to the Scottish beef sector to be made in the middle of April is very welcome in my region, which has suffered from flooding, and where the market prices have not helped. I had a very busy farming surgery at the Thainstone centre recently—most people now know where the centre is because it is regularly on the BBC—to which a lot of people came to discuss not only the CAP payments but market prices and flooding.
Unlike some of my colleagues, I have a very good relationship with the NFUS. I am quite happy to have that special relationship with it in my region, which means that I have been invited regularly to NFUS meetings. I was invited to one three or four weeks ago about the flooding situation, and I was delighted to participate in it. Two weeks ago, I was asked to talk to the NFUS locally about the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. It is important that we do such things. Last Friday, I was asked to speak to more than 100 farmers about the CAP payments. Other political parties decided not to go to that meeting, which I think was maybe a mistake. That engagement with farmers is so important at such a difficult time. I encourage all members to do a little more of that.
The situation has been very difficult, but the cabinet secretary has responded very well. Mike Russell spoke about the future for the cabinet secretary. I put it on record that the current cabinet secretary should be the first choice to represent our farmers in the next session of Parliament. I have asked a lot of farmers, “If not Richard Lochhead, who else?” There is no answer to that because, since he took office in 2007, he has shown that nobody else can take forward Scotland’s farming industry in the way that he has done.
Food is an issue that is very close to my heart, and Richard Lochhead has really put Scottish food on the map. It is so important to have Scotland the brand out there, not only for export, but for our market as well.
Draw to a close, please.
For many years, I have told farmers in the north-east that they should take their lead from their French counterparts. Elaine Murray and Tavish Scott talked about France. I remind Mr Scott that Scotland, unlike France, is not a member state.
I am afraid that I have to ask you to close.
I say to farmers: be more French. I will tell those who come to the Parliament tomorrow that that is important. We need CAP reform. We need a payment for farmers. We should buy local and trust our Scottish farmers.
I am afraid that that has taken time from the last speaker in the open debate. Rhoda Grant will have five minutes, but I am afraid that I can give Joan McAlpine only four minutes.
16:21
I pay tribute to Mary Scanlon, who made her valedictory speech this afternoon. Her hard work and dedication have won her the respect and affection of people throughout the Highlands and Islands. I am sure that they will miss her as much as she is obviously going to miss them.
Those of us who represent rural areas know that life is tough and that rurality breeds disadvantage. CAP payments can be the difference between viability and not being viable, and it is therefore not good enough that the cabinet secretary blames everyone else and takes no blame on himself. We are debating a degree of negligence that puts our farming and crofting communities in peril. It has led to hardship and it will lead to animal welfare problems. There are so many issues to raise that I hardly know where to start.
I welcome the fact that, ahead of the debate, the Scottish Government belatedly decided to pay from its own funds, but why did it wait until now? Surely it must have known about the shambolic state of the system and should have paid out before now. Was the cabinet secretary monitoring things and ensuring that the computer system that was being developed was fit for purpose? What checks and balances were there to ensure that the colossal cost of the new system was appropriate? The cost comes to around £10,000 per application. Many of my constituents are particularly angry and concerned about that. Many of them are waiting for payments that are much less than that, albeit that those payments are crucial to their businesses.
What impact has land registration had on the process? What anomalies are being caused by having three separate systems to map crofts? There is the Crofting Commission register of crofts, the integrated administration and control system maps and the Scottish land register maps. To what degree are conflicts between those three systems causing a problem and when on earth can that be sorted out?
I have heard about people who are not feeding themselves because they have to buy feed for their animals. Those people do not have the base to borrow commercially. Asking the banks to be flexible assumes that people have the wherewithal to borrow in the first place. The Scottish Government loan scheme asks for confirmation that the bank will not lend, and if the bank will not provide that confirmation, people have no access to the scheme. Bank lending brings interest payments and charges, but will people be compensated for that?
Is the loan fund being superseded by the new pay-out system? If so, will that happen automatically, or will people need to sign their lives away to access it? I have been sent a copy of the old form, which basically asked people to sign up to some horrendous statements. One of the statements that people had to sign up to was:
“I am aware that if this loan payment is found to constitute unlawful state aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Scottish Government may be forced to seek its repayment, along with interest on the payment insofar as it constitutes unlawful state aid.”
Who on earth could understand what that means? I for one would not be happy to sign up to that.
Last week, I spoke to members of Lewis Crofters Ltd, which is a co-op that provides feedstuff and other supplies to crofters. As a co-op, it tends to keep prices down. It is finding that although crofters are still buying feedstuff, because of the poor summer, which meant that they had to buy feedstuff for longer, they are not renewing things such as fencing, equipment and infrastructure because they cannot afford to do so. I have spoken to people who have had to change their business plans and adapt their operations because of the lack of funding. Those decisions will put them back a number of years.
There are also knock-on impacts on those who support such businesses. People who build fences are going out of business, as are associated infrastructure developers. The implications of the Government’s incompetence reverberate throughout our rural communities and have a huge economic impact.
I want to touch briefly on the crofting agricultural grant scheme, which Tavish Scott mentioned. I wrote to the cabinet secretary to ask why it had been frozen last year. He wrote back to assure me that it would soon be reopened and that the delay was a result of the strategic spending review—it was all George Osborne’s fault for being late with the budget. We know that the money in question comes straight from Europe, and while I hold George Osborne responsible for many things, I would not hold him responsible for that. It is little wonder that we are in such a mess if the cabinet secretary does not even know where the money comes from.
If the Scottish Government does not clear up the mess in the very near future, it will be sanctioned by the EU. What impact will that have on farmers and crofters? It would be utterly wrong if they had to fund the Government’s incompetence.
I call Joan McAlpine. I apologise for being able to give you only four minutes.
16:26
Thank you very much, Presiding Officer.
I would like to open by agreeing with Alex Fergusson and others, which may be surprising, but we agree sometimes. I agree with him on the difficulties that farmers are currently facing, which my colleague Angus MacDonald described as a “perfect storm”. There is an issue not just for farmers, as Mr Fergusson said, but for many other rural businesses and employers, from fencers to feed suppliers. I think that everyone in the chamber understands that, and none of us underestimates the impact. I hope that we can work together to deliver for our rural communities and farmers, which is exactly what Richard Lochhead is doing.
I think that it is important that we acknowledge the role of Mr Lochhead in securing £200 million at a time of extreme financial pressure. To put that into context, the entire bill for welfare mitigation that the Government has had to meet since the start of the welfare reform process is £300 million, and we must not forget the overall context of the £3.9 billion of cuts that the Conservative Government in London has imposed over the two spending review periods.
I am very proud that we have a cabinet secretary who has always fought for farmers. Colleagues are quite right to remind us that Labour and the Conservatives have both in the past argued against single farm payments. The current Conservative agriculture spokesman wants us to leave the EU, and Labour’s shadow farming spokeswoman, Kerry McCarthy, is a vegan who wants to campaign to stop people eating meat—not a great message to send out to UK farmers.
Mr Lochhead has, by contrast—as my colleague Michael Russell pointed out—consistently promoted agriculture as an industry and has elevated food and drink in the national consciousness. Thanks to his efforts, the contribution of the sector is now rightly praised and recognised.
Members might expect me to say that, but back in 2011 the industry lobbied then First Minister Alex Salmond to reappoint Mr Lochhead as the rural affairs minister. In fact, for a few people, his being reappointed was a condition of their support for the Scottish National Party in the 2011 election. When Mr Lochhead was reappointed, the then NFUS president Nigel Miller told The Scottish Farmer that the industry would welcome the news, and was quoted in the magazine as saying:
“Over the past few years, Mr Lochhead has shown a refreshing and genuine commitment to taking forward Scotland’s food and farming sectors and it is good news for both industries that he remains in the driving seat.”
If I was to make a gentle criticism of the cabinet secretary, it is perhaps that that commitment may have played some part in his bending over backwards in 2014 to accommodate the sector’s demands for three payment regions. That is not an example of trying to please everyone, as Alex Fergusson suggested; it is called listening to the farmers and going the extra mile.
I want to provide a little bit of context. England implemented the main feature of this reform—the move to area-based farm payments—back in 2005. The then Labour-Lib Dem Scottish Government decided not to make the change. When the reforms were implemented in England, serious problems were experienced, although the changes that were implemented there were far less complicated than the ones that are being made in Scotland. In 2005, the English payments were promised for February 2006. The number of farmers who were paid in February 2006 was 2,400—2 per cent of claims. In March 2006 it was 4,500, which was 4 per cent of claims. In April, it was 56,000, which was just under half the claims. The United Kingdom Government set aside £400 million at that point for late and inaccurate payments.
I am afraid that you must close.
I suggest that the Opposition parties have a look at the legacy report of Westminster’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for 2010-15 because—
I am sorry, Ms McAlpine, but you are out of time.
Paragraph 5 of that report is extremely critical of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It just shows that the UK Government has been here before under the Conservatives.
16:30
Parliament will certainly miss Mary Scanlon—possibly most in the first few months of the next session, when the Public Audit Committee of that time will have to look into what has gone on. There will be an Audit Scotland report some time before the summer recess, and whoever chairs and is part of that committee will undoubtedly have the first chance to examine closely what has happened. I would like to record, along with many colleagues across Parliament, that Mary Scanlon has been one heck of a performer—if I may put it that way—on that committee. One or two witnesses have visibly blanched under her stare. I spoke to someone who was recently in front of the committee who confessed to being slightly relieved to hear that she is retiring. Many of the rest of us, whatever political party we are in, will be sorry not to see her in Parliament, especially on that committee, in future years.
I will mention a few points that the cabinet secretary made. He is absolutely right that a combination of the weather and the complexity of CAP reform has created some real challenges. That is without question or dispute. Also without dispute is the point that every SNP back bencher has made this afternoon that the NFUS and others argued for three payment regions. Those things are not in question, and it is important to recognise, as the cabinet secretary made clear in his opening speech, that Parliament endorsed that position.
No one disputes those points. We dispute how payments are being made to crofters and farmers. It is the system that we dispute. I suspect that, in his private moments, Richard Lochhead thinks that the system has let him down personally, as well. However, he is a Government minister and, ultimately, all Government ministers have to take responsibility for their departments. I comment in passing that if Ross Finnie had made such mistakes, some people might have called for his head and would probably have burned effigies of him—led by Mike Russell. I simply do not agree that Parliament should not take a close interest in an issue that is profoundly important to rural Scotland, and should not question the ministers of the day.
I also absolutely do not accept the attacks by SNP members on Allan Bowie, the president of the NFU Scotland. He has a job to do, as any leader of any industrial body in Scotland has, and he has done the right thing by pointing out that the rural economy is £300 million light on investment that it should have had, and which the Government promised it would have in the early part of the year. For him to be attacked by all the SNP back benchers just for doing his job is a sign of a Government—or maybe a party—that needs to reflect on the fact that we all have a job to do in politics, and that Governments are better if they are held properly to account by Parliament and by organisations outside Parliament that represent their members.
Joan McAlpine rightly mentioned the environment committee—she got the title right and I cannot now remember it—of the UK Parliament. As I recollect, that committee absolutely took apart the Rural Payments Agency for the mistakes that it made when, as the cabinet secretary rightly said, it made an utter mess of making payments south of the border. The point is that the members of that committee from all political parties—including Conservatives, who attacked their own minister—did proper scrutiny of what had gone wrong. I commend that model to Parliament.
Does Tavish Scott agree with me that the Government in England at least took the decision in 2005, while the then Minister for the Environment and Rural Development in the Scottish Government sat on his hands?
I do not have a clue what Christian Allard is on about. What I remember about 2005 is that Richard Lochhead backed Ross Finnie’s decisions about CAP reform at that time. You might want to go and read your history books, because you are incredibly badly informed—and not for the first time.
Let me move on to Mr Russell and Mr Walker. [Interruption.]
Order. Speak through the chair, please.
Jim Walker used to be prayed in aid by members on the SNP benches when he was a prominent supporter of the yes campaign, but Mr Walker wrote an article in The Scottish Farmer last week that Mr Russell attacked earlier. It seems to me that Jim Walker just pointed out the facts about some of the points that Mary Scanlon made about Audit Scotland—he quoted Audit Scotland extensively.
Willie Coffey rightly made remarks about IT projects that have gone wrong south of the border. He used to make that point very effectively in the Public Audit Committee in previous years. However, the NHS 24 computer system in Scotland is £40 million over budget, and two of its chief executive officers have gone. Perhaps we want also to look a little at the context north of the border.
I will finish with two points. The first is simple: I hope that the cabinet secretary will accept today that he has a responsibility to crofters and farmers across Scotland to come back to Parliament before this session finishes to answer the many reasonable questions that have been asked by members of all political persuasions about the many aspects that remain outstanding. There are heaps of questions about 30 June, the SAF deadline, entitlement trading and what will happen if the £200 million cannot be paid for the reasons that other members have mentioned.
Finally, I make it very clear that the overall impact on the rural economy is very significant. It is significant now, which is what any Government would have to address—not least because store cattle prices and finished cattle prices are lower per head than they were a year ago, as the cabinet secretary will know from his constituency.
You must close.
The pressure in the whole system—the way the money flows—is very important in resolving the problems.
16:36
Early in February, I met members of NFUS Forth and Clyde and representatives of local businesses including an auction firm and one that sells farm machinery. The situation has been dire for those people and many others across Scotland. The mood was gloom-ridden and, at the same time, very anxious, and there was talk of concern for the mental wellbeing of farmers and their families. There was also worry about how long local businesses could carry on putting off hire-purchase payments. The knock-on effects across the local economy were starkly apparent.
Why do I raise that again, at the end of this long debate, when the cabinet secretary has finally managed to find the funding for interim payments? As the NFUS has stated, “essential liquidity” will be provided by the Scottish Government payment advance. It is in large part due to the efforts of the NFUS and its lobbying that that is now happening. I raise the issue again for two reasons. The first reason is that it took so long. As Tavish Scott stressed earlier in the debate, there was action in France on the issue last year. The tone of the cabinet secretary’s amendment to the motion today seems to put far too much blame on the stakeholders, although it is, in the end, for the Scottish Government to have sorted out the problem more quickly, or to have acted sooner on interim payments.
The second reason is that this must never be allowed to happen again. The debate has highlighted that second point over and over again. I know that everyone involved will continue to seek assurances from the Scottish Government that we are on track for a relatively smooth process in the next CAP round.
Before I focus on another issue, I ask the cabinet secretary specifically whether the Scottish Government will compensate farmers for interim bank-loan interest. To do so seems to be only fair, so I hope that he will comment on that in his closing remarks.
In the throes of the CAP chaos, Parliament must not fall guilty of neglecting the serious on-going difficulties for one specific sector—the dairy sector, which has been mentioned by other members today. It is, indeed, in freefall and the volatile open-market price threatens to drop even lower. The disparity between hard-working dairy farmers with contracts with big supermarkets and those without contracts to big supermarkets continues to be untenable. Supermarket-contracted farmers are paid more than double the price per litre that farmers without contracts are paid. That creates an atmosphere of instability and sometimes competition, which makes things difficult in some areas.
Margaret McDougall highlighted the concerns of the Sorn Milk group. I met some of its farmers this week, and they delivered a stark warning: without more intervention by the next Scottish Government, family-run firms may well not survive, and the future of a prized Scottish industry will be in fewer and larger factory-style farms.
Elaine Murray reminded us that the issue has continued since 2007—if not before. It is now about a year since the Scottish Government published the five-point dairy action plan. Given the deepening crisis, can the cabinet secretary give us an update on progress? It would be encouraging to hear something about new investment in processing capacity, because it is vital for supporting the industry at home for niche markets. Has the cabinet secretary looked to Ireland as a good model? Its early investment has been a great support.
We all know that power in the milk supply chain is skewed to the big retailers. There must be more regulation in Scotland to ensure transparency. Another issue to do with Scottish milk and other products that I want to raise and which must be addressed in the Scottish Parliament is Scottish labelling and what that means.
To look further into the future—this was stressed in the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee legacy evidence session last week—we must start early to plan for the next CAP if it is to be truly visionary and take account of the complexities of rural Scotland. We must ask where farming is going for the next decade and far beyond.
To build on Rhoda Grant’s comments on the Highlands, it is essential that we also support our crofting communities in the future. Where does the organics industry fit? How can it be developed? The same question applies to agroecology. What of climate change imperatives and the place of agroforestry in tackling flooding and meeting biodiversity targets? How do we best support our farmers and rural communities through the future CAP and other support mechanisms?
In this shameful age of food banks, how do we ensure—this is important—that Scotland’s people have access to fresh, affordable and, where possible, local food? How do we better link rural and urban Scotland so that we can all work together across the parties for good food for Scotland and for exporting, and for vibrant and strong rural communities?
16:42
I thank all members for their contributions. I am the second-last speaker in the debate, but I have paid close attention to many of the powerful points that have been made across the chamber.
On behalf of the Government, I pay tribute to Mary Scanlon for her service to the Scottish Parliament. Although I did not agree with the first half of her speech, the second half was dignified and, indeed, moving. Our swords have often crossed on the streets of Moray, but I pay tribute to her contribution to the Highlands and Islands and the Scottish Parliament.
I also pay tribute to Margaret McDougall. Her speech was not her last one, but it was probably her last on an agricultural topic. I wish her all the best for the future, as well.
We all agree on the importance of agriculture to Scotland and on supporting our primary producers—our farmers and our crofters—who underpin Scotland’s successful £14 billion food and drink industry. That simply would not exist to anywhere near the extent that it does without the hard work of our farmers and crofters and without our fantastic natural environment. They provide the raw materials that underpin many of our world-famous products. That has a huge economic value.
Despite the massive success in food and drink in recent years, the industry is encountering cash-flow issues because of the factors that many members have raised—particularly the low commodity prices that are affecting the dairy sector and other sectors. That is taking its toll, and I will return to that near the end of my speech.
There is also the recent weather. I have visited many farms that have been impacted by unbelievable, biblical-style flooding, which has damaged farming businesses. That is why John Swinney announced £1 million for repairing man-made flood banks on farms. Last week, I announced that we were providing an additional £1 million to cope with the number of applications in the affected areas. We are doing our best to help farmers in that context.
On the wider farm payments, which are the main topic of the debate, we have been taking every possible step to recognise the cash-flow problems that the sector is facing and to deal with the issues. As I said in my opening speech, 59 per cent of farmers and crofters have had their first instalment, which is equivalent to 80 per cent of their overall payment. That is £115 million that has gone out the door.
Last week, I announced that payments for the less favoured area status will be going out in the final week in March, so we will be close to the usual timescale for those vital payments, which are important to particular parts of Scotland. Last night’s announcement of £200 million of national money to ensure that those who do not have their application processed this month get the first instalment of their payment in April was the latest announcement.
I point out gently to the Labour Party and the Tories, who both made the point that the timing of that announcement was decided on because of the timetabling of today’s debate, that I said to the industry when I met it last week—before the topic for the debate had been announced—that we are working hard to address the cash-flow problem, that we are looking for solutions and that we are considering whether there are options to help the industry at this crucial time. That led to the First Minister’s announcement last night of the £200 million that has been made available.
We all recognise the hard work that the cabinet secretary and his officials have been putting in to solve the problem. However, does he associate himself with the disgraceful comments that we heard from his colleague Angus MacDonald about the leadership of the NFUS?
I will talk about the role of the stakeholders shortly.
The beef scheme is important to many producers in Scotland. It is a £40 million scheme and the money will be paid on the same timetable as applied to last year’s payments. We are making every effort possible to tackle the cash-flow issues.
Tavish Scott said that I might in my private moments wish that the IT system was performing better and that I have been infuriated by what is happening. I am very public about that. We recognise that there are issues with the IT system. As I have said many times, many people are working flat out to deal with it. I wish that I was a software specialist, but I am not. We employ people to do that work and, if they do not do a good enough job, we get more staff in—as we are doing now—to make sure that the system improves.
If the single application form process shows any signs of difficulty this year, will the cabinet secretary have a plan B in operation?
We are taking steps to ensure that the system is working, but we cannot divorce the complexity of the schemes from the payments. If we had chosen a system with two payment regions, we would not have encountered the same number of IT problems. We chose a system with three payment regions because we listened to the stakeholders, the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee and the political parties across the chamber.
In the last CAP, the UK Government had to pay disallowance of £642 million. We have to abide by EU rules to avoid paying disallowance in Scottish circumstances. I am not defending the IT system—as we have publicly acknowledged, there are problems with it—but we cannot divorce it from the complexity of the scheme. The complexity has to be dealt with so that we can avoid disallowance. We are not allowed to pay one single claim unless it is error free, has been validated and is compliant. We have to process the claims properly before we can pay out the money. That is an important point for us all to keep at the forefront of our minds.
Many members talked about the £178 million IT system. A lot of public money is being invested in delivering £4 billion of support to our agricultural communities. So far, £131 million has been committed—just over £98 million has been for the IT system and just under £33 million is non-IT spend in the futures programme, which relates to the £178 million. I wanted to get that on the record.
A number of issues have been raised and I will seek an opportunity to write to the committee or to Parliament to wrap up some of those issues before dissolution. However, I want to point to this week’s farming press. I like to read the farming press. Sometimes I feature in it; sometimes that is positive and sometimes it is not so positive. I was looking at the headlines this week, which said, “Inept civil servants failing UK farming”, “MPs demand payment timing clarity as ‘bizarre’ communications continue”, “Childish turf war blamed for farm payment delays” and “MPs brand CAP delays unacceptable”.
I thought that that must have been about me, because of what is happening in Scotland, but it turns out that it was about the Tory Government south of the border. Do I say that to make a cheap political point? Maybe. [Interruption.]
Order. Let us hear the cabinet secretary close.
The real reason why I said it is that these are immensely difficult issues. In 2005, Ross Finnie, with the support of other political parties, decided not to move to the area payment system, because it is so complicated and difficult to do in Scottish circumstances. This time around, we had no choice: Europe said that we had to move to it. Even without the complication of what we are doing in Scotland, the UK authorities are struggling south of the border with their CAP payments.
Cabinet secretary, you must close.
If we add that to the fact that the Conservative Party did not even want the payments in the first place and argued for scrapping them, that amounts to blatant, sheer hypocrisy in the debate.
I am afraid that you really must close. We are out of time.
I have worked flat out for the farmers and crofters in Scotland and I will continue to do that in the times ahead to get a better return from the market and ensure that the payments get out the door as quickly as possible. I urge Parliament to support the Government amendment.
I call Murdo Fraser to wind up the debate. I apologise for your having lost a bit of time; you have until 5 o’clock.
16:51
I thank all the members who contributed to the debate, and I will try to respond to as many points as I can. First, I single out my colleague and friend Mary Scanlon for her valedictory speech in the chamber, which gave us a flavour of what the next parliamentary session will miss without her presence. A number of members, including Tavish Scott and Richard Lochhead, were generous in their praise of her contribution, not least to the Public Audit Committee. I saw in press reports that at lunch time a semi-naked man was arrested by the police on Holyrood Road. I am assured that there is no truth in the rumour that that was a senior civil servant who had just had a bruising encounter with Mary Scanlon in the Public Audit Committee and who was trying to escape. [Laughter.] Mary will indeed be missed.
At the outset of the debate, my colleague Alex Fergusson set out the background to the issue. As of 3 March, 54 per cent of CAP claimants had received part payment under the basic payment scheme. That statistic masks a rather more worrying figure. The total that has been paid out equates to £103 million, or approximately a quarter of the total amount that is expected to be paid out. That means that some three quarters of the total funds have not yet been paid.
We know why we are here. As Mary Scanlon said, in October 2014, Audit Scotland produced a helpful section 22 report for the Public Audit Committee that looked at failures in IT management. The cost of the futures programme has escalated to some £178 million, which is in itself a scandal. These are large sums of public money that could and should be spent in other areas, and they are indicative of Government failures in IT that we see elsewhere, including those in NHS 24.
As we have heard, the impact of the failures has been dire. Delays in CAP payments and LFASS payments mean that there is a hole in the rural economy that represents some £365 million. As a number of members have reminded us, that money should be in the bank accounts of farmers, who would be spending it on paying invoices, settling with suppliers or ordering new supplies and equipment. Who knows what damage has been done to the supply chain and the wider rural economy by the failure to pay the money out?
The problem was recognised even by SNP members. Dave Thompson recognised the damage that is being done to the rural economy, but I was concerned by the suggestion that he made when he recounted his anecdote about his encounter at the Black Isle show. He seemed to suggest that it is no longer acceptable in Scotland to hold a different political opinion from that of the Scottish National Party. It seems that we all have to conform to the SNP’s view of the world or we are not allowed to have a voice. There is a name for that: it is called a one-party state. [Interruption.]
Order.
As we heard from a number of members, there has been a huge burden on farmers, with increased waits, expense and worry. Sarah Boyack and Elaine Murray gave a number of examples of that. Recently I spoke to one constituent farmer, living in highland Perthshire, who told me that because of difficulties with their broadband—that is another issue altogether—they had to make the journey to Perth, which is a return trip of two hours, in order to visit the area office to discuss their application and entitlement letter. When they got there, they found that the area office could not access the IT system and therefore had great difficulty in assisting them. Many other members can report constituents having similar problems.
Throughout the debate, we heard from SNP back benchers all the excuses about how this was such a substantial CAP reform, about all the individual claims that had to be processed, about all the farms that had to be inspected and about how much more complex the system is than previously. However, each of those challenges was known in advance, before the IT system was put in place.
Those excuses simply do not wash. Whenever the Government runs into problems, its default response is to turn around and blame someone else—it is Westminster’s fault or Europe’s fault. However, in this case, it is no one’s fault but the Government’s own. The buck stops with the Scottish Government.
We heard the first line of defence from the likes of Rob Gibson and others on the back benches. People such as Mr Gibson would do well to come up with a show of humility for the failures of their Government on such issues. Then we had the extraordinary attack from Angus MacDonald on the NFUS leadership. I thank him for two things: first, for giving me helpful lines about the SNP’s view on rural communities to deploy in election literature; and secondly—sincerely—for circulating to all members the list of the SNP’s attack lines, which let us know in advance what the interventions would be in the debate.
As the Official Report will show, I was highlighting the fact that the NFUS leadership acknowledged last October that having three payment regions could delay payments but thought that that risk was worth taking.
I thank Mr MacDonald for reading out rebuttal line 5 on the SNP’s list of lines to deploy.
As we heard, when similar problems occurred in England, the English Rural Payments Agency reverted to paper-based application forms. However, at least English farmers got paid, which is more than can be said for the situation in Scotland today.
I acknowledge the steps that the Scottish Government has taken. First, there was the £20 million hardship scheme, then there was the announcement that the Scottish Government would use its own funds to make LFASS payments to the majority of farmers in March and, just last night, we heard the announcement that £200 million would be invested to ensure that basic payments were made by the end of April. I know how welcome that announcement is to the farming community. However, we have to wonder how the Government, which is always pleading poverty and telling us that it cannot find money for anything, can suddenly find £200 million down the back of the sofa to get the cabinet secretary out of a deep political hole. That demonstrates the power of the Scottish Conservative Party as the real Opposition in the Parliament.
Here we go—the fight for second place.
Order.
We schedule a debate in our parliamentary time and lodge a motion for action and, within 24 hours, the Government produces £200 million out of thin air to address the problem. What a pity that the session is about to end and there are no more Opposition debate slots for the Scottish Conservatives. Who knows what problems we could have solved by championing them here in the Scottish Parliament? I can imagine a long queue at our door of those who need emergency Government cash. Sadly, they will have to wait until after the election before we can deal with those problems.
The Government action so far is welcome, but it is not the end of the story. We need to know that the entitlement letters that have been issued are accurate. Many constituents have said to me that those letters are riddled with errors that will take a long time to resolve.
We need to know the additional administrative cost of what is going on. We already know about the IT cost overruns so far; we know that extra staff have had to be drafted in by the Scottish Government and that the latest move is going to involve extra administration. How much does that total, and where in the Scottish Government's budget will that come from?
Finally, we need a full independent inquiry into what has gone wrong. Audit Scotland has already done sterling work, and I understand that it is continuing its investigations. We need to see what it concludes, but we should not close the door on further scrutiny.
Despite all the scuttling around over the past couple of days, there is no doubt that the cabinet secretary has lost the confidence of rural Scotland. The former NFUS president Jim Walker—formerly an SNP supporter, and someone who voted yes in the independence referendum—has called for the cabinet secretary’s resignation and said that he
“could never support a party, a Minister or a Government who have been quite so incompetent and frankly naïve.”
We on the Conservative benches are more generous. We are not calling for resignations. We are not here to score political points or to throw bricks—we will leave that to others. [Interruption.]
Order. Let us hear Mr Fraser.
What we—and Scotland’s farmers—want is firm action to make sure that our farmers get the money that they are due, without any further delay. We want this matter sorted. It has dragged on for too long and we need a thorough investigation so that it can never happen again. That is what our motion calls for, and I commend it to the chamber.
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