THE reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy, as agreed in Luxemburg in June 2003, promised to relieve farmers of an intense burden of paperwork and bureaucracy.
The reality has been somewhat different. Make one mistake and the financial penalties can be severe - enough to put a business at risk.
There is an appeals procedure, but farmers in Scotland appear to be faring less well than their counterparts i
n the Irish Republic. A recent comparison has revealed that farmers in Ireland are four times more likely to be successful with an appeal and that verdicts will be delivered twice as rapidly.
It gets worse. Penalties in Scotland are on average five times higher than in Ireland. In Ireland, the norm for a farmer who made a mistake in his paperwork was £360. In Scotland, miscreants lost on average £1,800.
Despite this, the European Commission, the ultimate arbiter, appears more than happy with the Irish system. The fact is that money clawed back in Ireland, mostly for genuine mistakes, remains significantly lower than in the UK.
There are three stages of appeal in Scotland. The first is to the Scottish Executive's Environment and Rural Affairs Department (SEERAD). Last year only 8 per cent of the 621 appeals were upheld. More than 60 farmers went on to a higher authority, a panel with several independent members, but none of those was successful. That contrasts with the Irish experience, where 36 per cent of appeals were upheld, wholly or partially.
The timescale for arriving at a final decision, with all questions settled, was just 89 days in Ireland. On this side of the water it took, on average, 170 days. But if the appellant opted to take his complaint a stage further, then the entire process stretched to 245 days. The cash flow implications for a small business could be very considerable. The ultimate resource for judicial consideration is the Scottish Land Court in Edinburgh. To date, no farmer has gone that far - the costs involved would appear to be prohibitive.
But to make matters worse, Scottish ministers have the authority to reject the findings of the second stage of any appeal. That does not sit well with Jim McLaren, the president of NFU Scotland.
He said: "Frankly, you cannot call our appeals systems independent when ministers can overrule the findings. We want a new regime, and this would see the SEERAD official removed from the second stage of the appeal.
"The next administration must get to grips with this problem. We have raised this issue with all the major political parties in the run-up to the Holyrood elections in May. The general opinion is supportive. We want to see some common sense brought to a system which is clearly devoid of that at present."
