Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
Unpaid bills for Defra's dirty work

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/18/nbook18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/18/ixhome.html&secureRefresh=true&; requestid=11660 Christopher Booker's notebook
(Filed: 18/01/2004)

A flurry of court cases in recent days has highlighted the horrifying treatment by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of 350 contractors who worked under ministry instructions during the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic. There is more than £100 million in outstanding payments for such operations as building pyres, moving carcases and disinfecting farms.

Terrified that it may lose £1 billion due to Britain from Brussels, Defra has tried to appease the European Commission by finding every excuse not to hand over the money. But now it seems the courts have finally called Defra to account for a campaign of intimidation which has been actively supported by ministers – while the UK Government may well lose the £1 billion it wishes to claim from Brussels anyway.

On Friday the new "Technology and Construction Court" ruled that the contractors JDM Accord should be paid the remaining £5 million of the £7 million cost of creating a vast burial pit at Ash Moor, Devon, which was never used (and which it cost taxpayers a further £3 million to fill in).

A few days earlier, Michael Pedrick, a 63-year-old Devon farmer who lost his entire farm stock during the crisis, was cleared at Exeter of trying to cheat Defra out of £17,000, after the ministry spent more than £100,000 trying to convict him. He said afterwards that he and his family had been "put through hell" by Defra's officials.

Another Devon farmer, Ted Haste, 62, was due to appear last Monday on charges of deceiving the old Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by wrongly claiming compensation in an invoice he was instructed to submit by Maff officials. At the last minute, after what Mr Haste described as two years of "living nightmare", Defra abandoned its case and told Mr Haste he was now free to continue his claim.

Hundreds of contractors have claims outstanding, including Robert Pugh of Montgomeryshire, still owed £500,000 by Defra after its officials spent two years quibbling over sums as small as 35p. A Devon-based contracting firm run by Luke Furse and his wife Suzanne gave such efficient assistance to Maff in building pyres that at one time they were employing 400 people.

Despite being supplied with 750,000 documents, meticulously recording every action the firm took under Maff's instruction, many counter-signed by Maff officials, Defra has conducted such a remorseless campaign of prevarication and intimidation that the firm is still owed £1.2 million.

During the crisis, Maff showed no restraint in signing up contractors to help. It was only after Brussels questioned the scale of Maff's expenditure, and indicated its reluctance to hand over £1.2 billion due to the UK Government under EU law, that serious difficulties began to arise over payments.

When many of the contractors' cases were taken on by the Forum of Private Business it emerged that Defra was using a common strategy to justify non-payment, including such manoeuvres as refusing to pay for meal breaks and travel time. Many of the same devices were used against JDM, as emerged in the 12-week case which came to judgment last Friday, when the court ruled they were illegal and in breach of contract.

The relevant ministers, led by Margaret Beckett and Alun Michael, publicly admit that they have spent £20 million "investigating" the hundreds of cases still outstanding – to save, they claim, £80 million. But of 1,200 cases investigated, the National Audit Office last year found that only 18 involved allegations of fraud, and six of those have already been dismissed.

The final disgrace of this affair is that, despite Defra's shameless efforts to convince Brussels that it has been looking after taxpayers' interests, the European Commission does not show any sign of being impressed. It has capped the UK's right to repayment at a mere £250 million, leaving £1 billion outstanding: a sum it seems the UK Government may now never be in a position to claim.