NFU fury over 'disproportionate' EU penalties

WITH a number of their members seeing their single farm payments being cut by thousands of pounds on account of failings in their bookwork, NFU Scotland has repeated its demand for a more proportionate penalty system for those Scottish farmers who breach support scheme rules.

Following a critical EU audit of the UK's procedures, the Scottish Government was obliged to bring in new penalty arrangements last year for those farmers found to have breached single farm payment rules.

It then came to light that the rules imposed by the EU were resulting in a number of farmers facing penalties of at least 3 per cent of their subsidy cheque, where previously the penalty for misdemeanours was 1 per cent.

At that time, Jim McLaren, the union president, called for a degree of proportionality with penalties in cases where inadvertent errors had crept into the farm's bookkeeping.

"It came as a real shock to individuals as many of their cases contain very low numbers of errors found during inspections, making the penalties under the new penalty regime totally disproportionate," he said. "We have members who have had several thousand livestock records inspected and have had two or three errors found under inspection.

"When looking at errors, it is right that a farm's size or the number of livestock in the business should be taken into consideration."

In Scotland, the size of herds kept by some of our largest farms run into the thousands of cattle. McLaren said: "Despite adopting the best record-keeping practices, it is virtually impossible, under inspection, for large herds to be error-free, leaving even the best run businesses open to penalties. That cannot be right."

Next Tuesday a paper on how to simplify the Common Agricultural Policy, prepared by MEP Richard Ashworth, will go before the EU's agriculture committee.

This has given NFU Scotland an opening to raise the issue in Brussels. According to McLaren: "We believe that there is scope for penalty rules to take proportionality into consideration, and we have put forward appropriate amendments to the report.

"Mr Ashworth's initial report suggests that the basic aim of the whole inspection process should be to give advice to farmers and put them on the right track to better comply with the legislative requirements and that only continuous and repeated infringements result in penalties.

"That sounds like common sense to us, and we would hope that MEPs, with greater powers under the Lisbon Treaty, would support such a move."

Backing this up, McLaren confirmed the union had written to the Brussels bureaucrats with the same message of proportionality.

The union is also seeking a legal opinion on the retrospective application of the higher penalty rates in 2009.

"The changes to the penalty system were only confirmed at the end of last year, with many of our members suffering higher levels of penalties than expected," said McLaren.

"In our view, these higher penalties were retrospectively imposed on their SFP following livestock inspections that had taken place much earlier in 2009.

Scottish farmers found to have errors in their records were not aware of the impact of the new system until 23 November last year, when they received a letter from the Scottish Government informing them that, as a result of the UK audit, cross compliance breaches were to result in a standard 3 per cent payment reduction.