Royal Highland Show 2014: Paterson urges Scots to avoid payment errors

Defra secretary Owen Paterson has urged Scotland to avoid repeating England’s costly mistakes during the switch to an area-based farm payment system.

During a question and answer session at the Royal Highland Show Mr Paterson said that England had made a “£600m Horlicks” of the transition which began in 2005.

He revealed that he had invited Scottish rural affairs minister Richard Lochhead to visit the Rural Payments Agency to see for himself how England had tackled the transition.

See also: All the news from the Royal Highland Show 2014

But he admitted that Mr Lochhead was yet to take up the invitation.

“The offer is open,” said Mr Paterson. “There is no point in making the same mistakes as the previous Labour government did.

“Those mistakes cost UK taxpayers £600m in disallowance [financial penalties] imposed by Brussels,” Mr Paterson added.

The Defra secretary also faced questions over €223m (£177m) of so-called EU convergence funding which is allocated to areas that have a lower than average farm payment a hectare.

The Scottish government has argued the whole allocation should go north of the border because the UK only qualifies for the payment as a result of Scotland’s lower than average payment.

But Westminster ruled that out and the row has raged ever since.

During the briefing Mr Paterson confirmed he had held further meetings with NFU Scotland president Nigel Miller over a possible review of the situation in 2017.

But although he conceded he was aware it was a problem he ruled out any immediate move.

“Once we get the current CAP through we could look again at setting up a review before the end of the current round [in 2020]. But we are all working flat out on the current CAP detail for now,” he said.