The Conservative Party has claimed the SNP has “lost the trust of rural Scotland” amid accusations the party are “blaming farmers” for “never-ending delays” to CAP payments.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said farmers “no longer have confidence” in Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead.
The comments came after the Press and Journal revealed Mr Lochhead was warned as long ago as the beginning of 2014 about potential problems with the £178million IT system to process payments.
Ms Davidson joined scathing attacks on the Scottish Government after the SNP accidentally sent a briefing note blaming farmers for the current fiasco to all parliamentary staff.
She said: “For the first time, the SNP government has taken over responsibility for managing payments to farmers.
“Here’s how it has done: we have a botched information technology system – costing nearly half as much as this Parliament building – which still does not work.
“We have farmers fobbed off with promises that they would receive their payments by the end of January. But only a third of them have.
“And we now find that ministers were told of problems in 2014 but, of course, back then, were all too busy campaigning for independence.
“We know what the (SNP’s) response has been, because it came in five pages of excuses that were emailed by mistake from the SNP to everybody in Parliament.”
She added: “The First Minister has lost the trust of rural Scotland. She has overseen yet another Government IT fiasco, and farmers no longer have confidence in her rural affairs secretary.”
The Scottish Liberal Democrats agreed it was “shameful” farmers had not been made aware of potential delays earlier.
Shetland MSP Tavish Scott added: “It is wrong for the SNP to blame farmers for the never-ending delays in distributing CAP payments.
“The relationship between the Cabinet Secretary and the Scottish National Farmers’ Union has been going downhill for a while and this will not help.”
However, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon defended her government’s record on delivering CAP payments.
She said: “My team, both in Government and in the civil service, are working to make sure we get payments to farmers as quickly as possible.
“The cabinet is discussing the issue weekly. We are fully behind those in the farming community and are doing everything possible to get payments to them as quickly as possible.
“It is true that processing payments has taken longer than we had intended due to the complexities of the new common agricultural policy system.
“We have been open with farmers and with industry about those complexities and what we are doing to address them.”