Rural Payments Agency: Basic Payment Scheme
Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Earl of Erroll
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My noble friend Lord Plumb speaks with a great deal of experience in these matters gained over many years. It is a complex issue and Defra is fully aware that we need to get all the help that we can to farmers, particularly at this time of year. As I outlined, there are many ways in which the RPA is there to help and assist, and we hope that the transfer will happen as straightforwardly as we can possibly make it.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I declare a serious interest as I do all the paperwork online for my wife, who farms and is trustee of a second place, so I will be trying to file for two estates. We were a quarter of the way through when the computer system went down at the weekend with no notice. It then kept saying that it would give us access as soon as possible but was offline for another week. Eventually, the latest announcement that we were going to paper was made. Trying to map the scale of complexity that we have on bits of paper that are blank is ridiculous. The whole place was mapped and inspected a few months ago, and the Rural Land Register has completely accurate maps in place. Why are those not being used? They show the deductions and the only things that need to be added are cropping and greening.
Also, the single payment system was up and running perfectly well but is about to be taken down in a few days’ time. Why not use that as the basis, because it has all the maps and has done for the last 10 years? All that has to be added to it are the crops, as opposed to just simple crop codes, and then a greening percentage. It is not that difficult. Maybe someone practical who understands IT should be involved. I have been doing this for 12 years, since IACS was going online. Maybe someone who actually understands how the system works at the sharp end could advise on how this can be sorted out. Trying to do it on paper is going to be a disaster; it will be like back in 2005 when the students tried to put it online and the mapping errors took a year or more to sort out.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I hear what the noble Earl says. The paper exercise is designed for people who are unable to access a computer. Any data that are already on the computer have been saved. The RPA has written to all those who may have broadband problems, if that is an issue. The data should not need to be re-entered if it is already on the system.