MPs call for Rural Payments Agency halt to bonus payouts

Commons demands restriction on bonuses to staff running IT system responsible for late payment to farmers

MPs are demanding that managers responsible for the failed system of general grant payments to farmers be barred from receiving bonuses until they have significantly improved the system's performance.

The unprecedented demand comes from the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee, in protest at the way farmers are continuing to be paid late by the scheme run by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).

The scheme's creaking IT system is at the heart of its continued failure to make single payments required by the EU Common Agricultural Policy on time since 2005.

In a hard-hitting letter to environment minister Caroline Spelman, the EFRA Committee warns the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) that farmers are still suffering as a result of persistent administrative failures.

A National Audit Office report accused the agency of "scant regard for protecting public money" after incurring £680m in unforeseen costs, on top of £350m for the IT systems.

Committee chair Anne McIntosh said: "Many MPs continue to hear harrowing stories of the hardship caused to farmers by late payment from the RPA."

In a letter to DEFRA on behalf of the committee, she complained that when Mark Grimshaw, former head of the ill-fated Child Support Agency and now RPA chief executive, gave evidence to the committee, he "was unable to give us an assurance that there would be no performance bonuses for RPA staff in respect of 2009-10".

She wrote: "The committee seeks the department's undertaking that money will not be available for performance bonuses for RPA staff involved in SPS [single payment scheme] payments until there is clear and independently audited evidence of the agency achieving significant performance improvements."

The committee also wanted assurances that the agency is "fully engaged" in work on the future of the SPS in Brussels.