AN appeals procedure for farmers who feel they have been wrongly accused of failing to comply with the regulations covering EU
subsidy schemes will be in force next month.
The news, announced yesterday in the Scottish Parliament, was welcomed by Scottish NFU
president Jim Walker, who said the new system would bring with it a greater transparency in
handling disputes between the Executive and producers.
There has been concern that straightforward clerical errors could result in serious financial penalties running into tens of thousands of pounds.
Rural Affairs Minister Ross Finnie warned that the appeals hearings could not re-write or revise EU support schemes, but they could review the way in which regulations had been applied by his department.
He told parliament that the appeals, from November 9, would cover all livestock and arable support regimes under the Integrated Administration and Control Systems (IACS). From January 1 next year, the legislation will also cover the main agri-environment and afforestation schemes, sheep annual premium, and suckler cow premium. An information leaflet will be issued later this month.
Appeals will be in three stages. At the lowest level, a case will be reviewed by three departmental officials not involved in the original decision.
If no satisfactory solution is found, a producer can have a second hearing which will involve two independent assessors and a senior official from the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department involved in the management of the particular subsidy scheme.
The final stage will involve a hearing at the Scottish Land Court, where the chairman has the status of a Court of Session judge. For a Land Court appeal, there will be a charge of #100 per application and #125 a day for an oral hearing.
The new proposals were given a broad welcome by all political parties yesterday. Fergus Ewing, the recently appointed rural affairs spokesman for the SNP, said many crofters and farmers had felt they had been unfairly punished and treated as criminals under a set of rules which did not always meet the facts of the ''crime''.
Despite calls for the legislation to be made retrospective, the Minister said a line had to be drawn somewhere. That meant appeals under the new procedure would apply only to IACS applications submitted this year.
At a news briefing after his parliamentary statement, he said it was hoped the new system would meet the points raised by those who felt that the department had in the past acted as judge and jury.
The majority of appeals against departmental rulings on the
imposition of penalties came from the livestock sector. Out of 1000 complaints, only 52 were from arable producers.
Each year, he said, the department dealt with 71,000 IACS applications. Out of that total, more than 3000 would be subject to penalties. About 1000 of these cases would involve the loss of a producer's entire entitlement to subsidy. Most disputes, he said, centred on disagreements about the accuracy of flock records.
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