County farmers were 'let down'

Shropshire farmers were let down by the Government during last year's summer of discontent with Defra failing to budget for foot and mouth, flooding and avian flu.

The damning report by MPs from the public accounts committee said environment ministers failed to make their budget flexible enough to deal with the mayhem.

Nearly 50,000 homes were flooded during the rains of summer 2007.

And many birds were slaughtered during the outbreak of the virulent HN51 strain of bird flu later in the year.

In Shropshire, hundreds of farms were affected by a ban on the movement of livestock following an outbreak of foot and mouth disease which came from a leak at a Government research laboratory.

Oswestry farmer Malcolm Roberts was furious. "Everyone feels let down by the way this Government handled the outbreak of foot and mouth," he said.

"It was abominable from start to finish. We had no help, no hands-on advice and no support. Yet it was the Government which was responsible for the leak because it wanted to cut corners.

"Unfortunately it takes more than a year to get over this sort of hit to the industry and, given the other pressures on farmers, we could see many more getting out for good."

The report said the events of last summer cost Defra an additional £60 million, which had to be funded by reducing budgets for other activities in the department.

It also found that Defra had budgeted to spend more than the funding limits it had been given by the Treasury in the previous two successive years.

Tory MP Edward Leigh, chair of the committee, said: "As the risk of overspending became clear, the department had to make in-year budget cuts to its planned activities.

"This is a clear example of poor financial management harming the delivery of services."

In 2007/08, the department received £3,617 million from the Treasury but failed to allocate final budgets until five months into the financial year.

Mr Leigh continued: "The department has now established more rigorous financial and outcome monitoring systems but the many lessons of what had gone wrong should be closely studied."

Oliver Cartwright, for the NFU in Telford, added: "Shropshire farmers should feel rightly disappointed that Defra has failed so miserably to keep its finances in order when the industry has had to cope through periods of exceptional financial difficulty, although more funding for Defra needs to come from Government."

By Rural Affairs Editor Nathan Rous