In an exclusive interview with the Farmers Journal Scotland, Cabinet Secretary Fergus Ewing admitted that the payment scheme was too complicated.

“In retrospect, is the system too complex? In my opinion, yes it is,” Ewing admitted.

“And,therefore, should there be an opportunity to redesign funding schemes, then I think we want a Mondeo – not a Rolls Royce,” he added, calling for a more-practical system. “It is better to have practicality, things that farmers actually need and value. This goes across production and the environment. Can we come up with a support system which is simpler to understand and deliver?”

Ewing went on to discuss the Government’s post-Brexit rural policy, convergence and the ongoing payment debacle. As revealed last week by Audit Scotland’s report, the Government is facing into fines of up to £60m if support payments are not made by the end of the month.

An independent review into the rural payments IT system has stated that whilst architecture of the computer system is “fundamentally sound” there are 23 recommendations for improvement. The report criticised the ”poor quality and incomplete design documentation leading to a dependency on key staff and with existing suppliers.”

It goes on to state that the system looks likely to struggle with the future needs post-Brexit stating “future enhancements and upgrades will be more complex and costly as a result of short cuts taken in early system development.”

The report says that the “quality has been compromised in many areas … to expedite delivery.”

It goes to say that the analysis, design and development teams have been of a lower quality than they have seen elsewhere so this has also been a contributory factor.”

Finally, the programme of continuous service improvement will take up to 2,000 days to carry out.

For more see p5.