AN INVESTIGATION into the Government’s failure to pay subsidies to English farmers on time, leaving tens of thousands of agricultural workers struggling to settle bills, has been started by the National Audit Office.

About 75,000 farmers and growers are paying £13 million a week in interest on overdrafts and loans.

The Government had promised 96 per cent of the £1.6 billion subsidies would be made by March 31. But the latest figures from the Rural Payments Agency, part of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and responsible for paying farmers on behalf of the European Commission, show that only £358 million has been sent out.

The agency blames the complexity of the single payment system, which replaced 11 separate payment regimes. It says that increased take-up of the new subsidies and the late implementation of legislation also hampered progress.

Farmers are urging the Government to make interim payments, emphasising the knock-on effect on the wider rural economy.

Richard Betton, 51, of Middleton-in-Teesdale, Co Durham, has been a hill farmer for 33 years and is owed £25,000 in unpaid subsidies. He said: “Bills are coming in, but there is not a lot to pay them with.”

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