Scotland’s top civil servant has said she has “greater confidence” in the troubled farm payments system but warned there could be “further errors” as the IT system expands.
Farmers faced lengthy delays for the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies following problems with the £178million Scottish Government IT system set up to administer them.
A cash advance loan scheme set up by ministers to help farmers hit by payment delays has also run into trouble, with 166 farmers overpaid a total of £746,000 after “human error” caused by a botched formula in a spreadsheet.
Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans told Holyrood’s Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee of the new error in writing and apologised in person at the committee yesterday.
She told MSPs: “I want to reiterate an apology to those farmers and crofters who have had to cope with delays and significant uncertainty with their 2015 payments.
“As a government, we have not delivered the level of service that people expected. The cabinet secretary for rural economy has already apologised and I echo his apology.”
She added: “Looking to the future, we have some greater confidence about CAP 2016 payments than with CAP 2015.”
Ms Evans said this was due to improvements to the IT system, governance and decision-making as well as learning from past mistakes.
She added: “However, we cannot be confident of total success, not least because we remain reliant on more functionality drops to deliver the CAP compliant system which we need.
“So, I cannot commit to there being no further errors such as those on which I recently wrote to you.”
Afterwards, deputy committee convener Liam Kerr, Conservative North East MSP said: “I appreciate the candour with which the permanent secretary spoke at committee, but the reality for farmers is that there are no promises that things are going to get any better.”
SNP MSP Alex Neil said it would be “morally wrong” for the Scottish Government to charge farmers interest for late repayment of the overpaid loans as it had not paid them interest on its own late CAP payments.
Scottish Government officials said “no decision” had been made on whether or not to charge interest.
