The UK department responsible for agricultural subsidies under the EU’s single payment scheme has come under criticism from a parliamentary committee.

Problems with administering the single payments have haunted the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) since the subsidy scheme was introduced in 2005. The single payment scheme, which replaced subsidies that were linked to production, is intended to be less market distorting.

In a report issued in July, the UK Commons’ Public Accounts Committee says that DEFRA rushed into the subsidy reform, leading to wide-spread errors that have yet to be resolved. 
  
“The Department had chosen to implement the most complex option for reform in the shortest possible timescale, and the Agency had badly underestimated the scale of the task,” writes the Committee. “This led to delays in making payments to farmers, erroneous payments and additional project and administrative tasks.”

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA), the DEFRA agency responsible for administering the payments, estimates that it overpaid farmers £ 20 million in 2005 and £ 17.4 million in 2006. Moreover, it was only at the end of 2007 that the agency began to recover subsidies that were wrongly handed out in 2005.

Farmers have complained of the uncertainty this has created, given that many do not know how much they will have to repay.

Despite a staff of 4,600 in mid-2007, and budget of over £ 300 million (US$ 600 million), the RPA is slow to provide basic information to farmers, such as on how much money they will receive under the subsidy program, and when it will be sent, says the parliamentary report.