Labour's waste

WHEN Harriet Harman said that Gordon Brown's legacy would not be forgotten, it is doubtful she had the Rural Payments Agency in mind. Yet this embarrassingly mismanaged body, set up to distribute European subsidies to farmers in England, stands as a grim monument to New Labour's appalling record of administrative ineptitude.

As if the EU's Common Agricultural Policy was not bad enough in itself, as an unwieldy, unfair and hugely wasteful method of supporting farmers, Britain chose to compound its mistakes by filtering subsidies through the RPA, thereby adding an entirely new level of complex bureaucracy which has proved hopelessly unsuited to the task.

This is exemplified by the latest report that more than 60,000 farmers received payments last year that were worth less than the costs of processing the claims. The real scandal, however, is that these stories have been emanating from the RPA ever since the agency was first set up, yet despite numerous attempts at reform, vast sums of money are still being wasted.

Only last year, the National Audit Office accused the RPA of showing "scant regard for the protection of public money" and the reality of the problem is starkly illustrated by the fact that, even if the agency meets its latest improvement targets, payments in Scotland are far cheaper to administer under a much simpler system.

We now wait to see if a change of government will have any effect on sorting out the RPA's problems. For one thing is certain: the electorate will not accept a painful level of public-sector cuts if such flagrant waste continues to go unaddressed.