Association Chairman, Tim Jackson, highlights that the Scottish Government are still failing our farmers over annual payments.
“More than 250 farming businesses in East Lothian were promised their Common Agricultural Policy Farm payments of over £12 million in December 2015. These businesses would therefore have reasonably expected that, by now, the overdue payments would have been forthcoming. However, despite the Scottish Government spending nearly £180 million on a new flawed IT system, broken promises and worthless reassurances, the majority of farmers have still to receive a single penny.
“As a result, many East Lothian farmers are struggling with serious cash flow difficulties which not just adversely affects them but also ancillary industries and the wider East Lothian economy.
“It is quite clear that Richard Lochead, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, has mishandled this issue, as demonstrated by his panic stricken announcement of a £20 million hardship loan fund. That is nothing more than an admission of failure. Farmers don’t want to have to borrow even more, they just want to receive what is rightly theirs.
“I suspect the truth is that if this was affecting urban Scotland or the central belt, the SNP Government would have resolved the issue by now. However, because it affects rural Scotland it has been allowed to slip off their radar screen. As former NFUS boss, Jim Walker, said, despite backing independence, ’I could never support a party, a Minister or Government who have been quite so incompetent and frankly naïve’.
“The local MP, George Kerevan claims that the SNP Government and himself are friends of the farming community. However, all the evidence suggests otherwise with patience wearing thin among the farming community over the Scottish Government’s endless ‘we are trying our best excuses’.
“Of all the political leaders, only Ruth Davidson, MSP and her Rural Affairs spokesman, Alex Fergusson MSP have persistently called the Scottish Government to account over the impact of its failure to pay farmers on time. Since there is still no end in sight to this sorry episode, it is surely time that Nicola Sturgeon takes personal charge and arranges immediate delivery of the overdue payments to the long suffering farming community, especially to those here in East Lothian.”