There follows the text of a letter I sent to the Rural Payments Agency on behalf of a customer whose name has been changed. When considering this, the reader might want to bear in mind that only recently a pensioner was sent to jail (the ex-serviceman was actually handcuffed) for not paying his council tax. It’s bizarre isn’t it? HM Government can waste billions of taxpayers’ money baling out Northern Rock and yet when to comes to divvying up for farmers it seems they will have to wait for their money. And to cap it all when the Government want something from one of its longstanding citizens it is quite prepared to throw a seventy-six year old into jail. Welcome to democracy! – or rather is it Chipperfield’s Circus?

Monday, 25 February 2008

Ms S Smith
Rural Payments Agency
PO Box 1058
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE99 4YQ

BY EMAIL AND POST

Dear Madam,

JOHN SMITH OF A FARM, STAFFORD - SBI 1XXXXXXXXX, TASK 401XXX

I am writing further to our conversation of Friday. I am enclosing the authority of Mr Smith so that you can respond to me.

During our conversation, you told me that the information you have, to explain the delay in making payments, is because your systems are being upgraded and that you still have a payment ‘window’ to make the 2007 payment. It seems to me that as we become more technologically advanced, so we lose sight of human reality. If ever this was exemplified by terms such as ‘payment window’, ‘system upgrades’, ‘Task number’ and all the rest of the emblems of mediocrity that any one engaged in a rural business can expect to suffer at the hands of DEFRA. I know of no more innocent and noble an occupation than the production of food and yet this is now festooned with a plethora of bureaucratic twaddle and interference that must make the task of doing the job almost impossible. Couple this with reduced incomes, exacerbated by your flawed payment policy, then it is a wonder we have any farmers at all. Still what the heck, Tesco can import all the food we need – just don’t ask them to cut the hedges and when you drive by what used to be manicured fields and view the triffids growing in what was England’s green and pleasant land perhaps then, and only then, will folk realise that we actually need farmers. Those with the right to roam are likely to need a machete but let’s be positive; at least the wolf is likely to make a comeback.

I would submit that your department is obsessed only with processing data and application forms as opposed to understanding, at an elementary level, that what you do affects real people’s lives and their livelihoods. DEFRA should be ashamed of itself. When I suggested that were your computer not there you would have to process payments manually, you had the temerity to suggest that manual payments were only made if there were cases of severe hardship. I must be missing something – perhaps foot and mouth, BSE and the other issues affecting farm incomes were just a dream. It would seem obvious to me that to DEFRA that is exactly what these were. I wonder how long you have to wait for your monthly salary and when it would become a hardship for you were it not paid. How, I wonder, would you and your peers react if your employer told you that they had a window to make payments of your salary four months from now and that it could not pay you because the computer needed to be upgraded. You would walk out wouldn’t you? The difference that makes the difference is that farmers cannot walk out. The animals still need to be fed, the land husbanded and the usual chores attended to. Perhaps you might wish to consider this the next time you read your excuses from your script and talk about ‘windows’ and ‘computer upgrades’ to those who enquire, as this is what you have been told to say – you are slaves only to your computer system that has no heart, no reality and lives only as a figment of your imagination.

You have lost sight of reality. The next time you dip toast into an egg maybe it will register that the egg comes from a farmer (who is probably up against it) and not the local supermarket – very little helps.

I realise that farmers like Mr Smith must pander to the over bearing bureaucracy expounded by Brussels. In so doing (and woe betide him should he not comply by burning some bale string) the least he can expect is to be paid under those rules to which he has to submit. Whilst your view may be that you have a ‘window’ until the end of June 2008, perhaps you might consider getting out of stop mode before Mr Smith throws himself out of his ‘window’. After all, you are dealing with his 2005 claim. Perhaps this should have been paid by the end of the June 2006 window. I do trust you will be paying Mr Smith interest.

I wonder if I might prevail upon you, when you have a window of course, to let me have a full explanation of the position and when Mr Smith can expect to be paid. Perhaps in your letter, you might confirm: -

• Your definition of ‘severe hardship’?
• That you will be paying interest to Mr Smith for not paying his 2005 and presumably 2006 claims by the correct ‘window’.

Perhaps we can expect a reply before the next Preston Guild.

I realise that you are only doing your job and I have no intention of offending you personally but the situation is simply not good enough. Perhaps when we hear from you we can have some positive news.

Thanking you in anticipation.

Yours faithfully,

M Bracegirdle
For and on behalf of L & G Bracegirdle Limited