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2 IMPLEMENTING OUR REMIT
2.1 We have consulted widely, both within Scotland and beyond (a list of bodies and individuals is at Appendix 1). Within Scotland interviewees have included some of those who administer the system within SGRPID, external panel members, the Chairman of the Scottish Land Court, individual appellants who have been through the system and representatives of farming and crofting interests. In addition we carried out what might be called a "customer satisfaction survey" among a statistically representative sample of people who had been through the system.
2.2 Furth of Scotland we have interviewed scheme administrators and representatives of the farming industry in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We visited Brussels when the Copa-Cogeca (a forum for the farming unions of EU member states) was meeting and interviewed farming representatives from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany and The Netherlands, our purpose being to see what arrangements exist in a sample of member states broadly comparable to the UK.
2.3 Three things emerged from these visits which, although not bearing on the implementation of our remit, it is convenient and important to note at this stage.
2.4 Firstly, the range of approaches which we encountered. As we mentioned in opening, some EU member states have no distinct appeal procedure for challenging government decisions on aid. These include Germany and France, two of the biggest agricultural "players" within the Union. In these countries if a challenge is made by someone who has suffered disallowance or penalty the payments agencies will check for any error in the way in which they have come to their decision or in the decision itself but beyond that resort has to be to the ordinary courts.
2.5 By contrast the various constituent parts of the United Kingdom and, even more so, the Republic of Ireland have very sophisticated appeal mechanisms albeit that, so far as the various parts of the UK are concerned, they operate with varying degrees of effectiveness. The Netherlands and Finland were somewhere in between, both having administrative bodies to which such appeals are referred.
2.6 Secondly, that the other member states had long since disposed of their legacy scheme cases, whereas Scotland still has a backlog. In Brussels the talk was all of appeals arising out of cross-compliance problems and the like - problems associated with the Single Payments and Agri-environmental Schemes rather than the old production-linked schemes - while Scotland has been bogged down in the processing of 5% heifer cases 11 and the like. That, of course, is in part a problem associated with the very fact that we have an appeals process: where there is no appeals process there is not going to be a backlog of appeals. But in other jurisdictions which do have appeal mechanisms (such as the Republic of Ireland, Finland and the Netherlands) there were no such backlogs.
2.7 The third point is one of similarity rather than contrast. It was the common perception of those we spoke to, both civil servants and farmers' representatives, that the regulations which govern agricultural aid in the European Union are insufficiently flexible to allow justice to be achieved in cases involving innocent error and that the penalties or disallowances prescribed by these regulations are sometimes grossly disproportionate to any culpability on the part of the claimant. These comments were made not just with reference to the old legacy schemes. They were also made by people who have some experience of the new regime. It seems therefore that the same perception is being formed in relation to the regulations governing the new schemes. In the light of the expectations which accompanied the introduction of the present appeals structure, it is, therefore, right to sound a note of caution here. To recommend changes in the law is not part of our remit. In cases where the outcome is prescribed by law, therefore, farmers should not expect any new appeal system set up as a result of this report to produce results which claimants would regard as more sensible and fairer than those produced by the old. Reaching such results will only be possible by changing European law.
2.8 That said, however, we have taken a wide view of our remit and as well as looking at possible structural and procedural improvements to the present system we have looked at the whole ethos which presently informs and guides its operation.
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