The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) chief Mark Grimshaw has insisted he is 'the right man for the job' to deliver an improved support payments service for farmers.
With the new payment window for farmers opening on 1 December, a committee of MPs have asked whether successive government ministers were right to declare their confidence in Mr Grimshaw's leadership at the end of a year of missed payments targets and inaccurate settlements.
Mark Grimshaw answered questions about his agency’s performance at an Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee hearing, and vowed that the last 1,000 or so of unsettled 2015 Basic Payment Scheme claims would be “closed” by early January at the latest.
Mr Grimshaw also said the Agency was “looking good” for meeting the government target of paying 90 per cent of farmers by the end of December when the 2016 scheme opens for payments.
Responding to MPs who questioned whether ministers’ faith in him was justified, Mr Grimshaw said: “They are absolutely right to have confidence in me as I believe this committee should have confidence in me as well, mainly because there is no one in this country that understands the Bsic Payment Scheme, the history or the payments system that we have got in place better than I do.”
He added: “We are going to be demonstrating far better performance levels for BPS 2016 and we expect 2017 to get off to a very good start.”
The RPA has been criticised by MPs for poor communication with those farmers who were hit with delayed payments this year.
