>From today's Telegraph:
Sack for Head of Farm Cash Agency
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
The former chief executive of the Rural Payments Agency at the centre of the
farm payments fiasco has been sacked nearly nine months after he was suspended
on his £114,000 year salary.
Johnston McNeill, who presided over the agency in the run up to its failure to
pay England's farmers their subsidy cheques on time, has been paid £57,000, or
six months pay.
Mr McNeill, who with his board is likely to have incurred £131 million in fines
from the EU because payments were late, will get a pension of £12,000 a year
for life and a payment of £42,000.
This week Helen Ghosh, Defra's permanent secretary, revealed that his contract
had been terminated with no settlement. "He was paid his contractual
entitlement," she said.
Mr McNeill declined three times to give evidence before Commons committees
inquiring into the farm payments fiasco, stating that he was suffering from
stress.
It also emerged yesterday that Alan McDermott, the agency's £225,000-a-year
inf-ormation services director, had also left the RPA.
Mr McDermott was responsible for managing the computer system which was
supposed to map all English farmers' land and pay them their cheques by the
deadline of June 30 this year.
Michael Jack, the Conservative chairman of the Commons Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs select committee, said: "This saga tells me that there is a much
greater need for expertise within government. They needed a knowledgable
independent person who could say to ministers, 'Look, in my considered opinion,
things are going wrong."
David Miliband, the Environent Secretary, has set the "challenging" target of
paying 96 per cent of farmers' 2006 subsidies by the end of June next year.
David Mack
