BSE, the cost of a crisis : thirty-fourth report, together with the proceedings of the Committee relating to the report, the minutes of evidence and appendices / Committee of Public Accounts.

  • Public Accounts Committee
Date:
1999
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: BSE, the cost of a crisis : thirty-fourth report, together with the proceedings of the Committee relating to the report, the minutes of evidence and appendices / Committee of Public Accounts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/68 (page 10)
    [Mr Wardle Cont] 29. Thank you. Can I move, Mr Packer, to a general question. Bearing in mind the terrible experience farmers, MAFF and everybody else has been through in this crisis, are there strictly comparable controls on beef production in the rest of the European Union? (Mr Packer) Of course, Mr Wardle, there is no comparable control to the Over Thirty Month Scheme in any other European country and that constitutes the bulk of the expense here. I think your question would be perhaps are there comparable controls on specified risk material in other Member States? SU eyes: (Mr Packer) 1 think the answer to that is there are in some of them. 31. What about the rest of the world, the wider picture? You are absolutely right about the direction of my question. Thank you. (Mr Packer) 1am not aware of any country outside the European Union and Switzerland which operates specified risk material controls. 32. So in spite of the fact that farmers are being brought to their knees the taxpayer has had to foot an enormous bill, your Department and Mr Trevelyan’s agency undoubtedly have had to work morning, noon and night, you are saying that the British consumer has no absolute guarantee about the quality of meat that is imported into this country? (Mr Packer) Imports are specified risk material removed. required to have 33. Do you believe the assurances given for that purpose from your vantage point? (Mr Packer) It is not so much assurances, Mr Wardle, it is checks. It is illegal to sell beef which contains specified risk material in this country from whatever origin. 34. Thank you. Can we revert for a second to page 4, paragraph 11, where we are told that farmers taking beef cattle straight to abattoirs and not via the market were overpaid because the liveweight to deadweight ratio was miscalculated for beef cattle. Whose miscalculation was that? The cost I think was £13 million. (Mr Packer) That was a consequence of the Council conclusions on 3 April 1996 which contained this specification that the compensation rates would be at a ratio of 2:1. I believe it was initially proposed by the Commission and adopted by the Council, with the United Kingdom dissenting at that time—not necessarily on that ground but that is the formal position—and subsequently the Commission were reluctant to change the figure since it had figured in the Council’s conclusion. 35. Thank you. Can we move on to page 85, paragraph 4.20, where the NAO noted that extra reimbursement from the EC could have been claimed. How much extra could have been claimed? Can we ask the C&AG that question first? In the NAO’s view how much extra could have been claimed that was not claimed? If you look at 4.20, it says, “the claims were drawn up manually due to the absence of a come to that. The claims were based on the number of animals slaughtered with adjustments being made for animals that were not eligible. I realise it is an administrative and accounting nightmare, but how much is the shortfall in terms of potential reimbursement? (Mr Le Marechal) We do not have a figure to hand, Mr Wardle, but we can provide you with one. 36. But you were able to assert with confidence in this Report, were you not, that there is a shortfall in terms of reimbursements claimed and apparently neither Mr Packer nor Mr Trevelyan disagreed with you? Perhaps Mr Trevelyan can throw some light on this? (Mr Trevelyan) Taking the 1997 FEOGA figure’ which ended in October 1997, we have recently submitted a claim to the Commission for 30 million sterling as being what we regard as the balance amount for what we readily acknowledge was our conservative claiming policy. 37. Can you substantiate that, or is that going to be subject to negotiation? (Mr Trevelyan) It can be fully substantiated because what has happened since this report was written was that the back-loading exercise on our cattle data base has been completed, we are fully confident there are no double claims anywhere within the system, and we can safely make our balancing claim to the European Commission. To put that in context, that is approximately 8 per cent of the total claim in relation to 1997’. 38. But the point is, you have done it, you have overcome the accounting gaps, as it were, filled them, got the information and taken it to the Commission. I am encouraged by that. Can I finally turn to page 44, paragraph 2.59 and the introduction of a computer system? I am sure colleagues may have questions to ask about this. How on earth can the Board have hoped to implement a computer scheme in May 1996 only to find out very shortly that it was not feasible? Who had done the prior feasibility study? Who was assuring you it could be done? Or was this just a pipe dream? (Mr Trevelyan) The inwardness of that is that the question put to our in-house computer experts was, if we had a live weight only cull scheme with a very limited range of questions asked, then with six or seven data fields we could construct a data base which could be up and running in a couple of months. I can go on further as to what happened. 39. Can we just hear a little more on that? (Mr Trevelyan) In reality, Chairman, we ended up with a scheme which has four separate collection centres in its maturity—we have live weight centres, dead weight centres, incineration points for casualties and now renderers treated as collection centres. Every single one of them has to have a separate data entry into the system, and they all have a wide range of data fields. We are into the high 90s and low 100s in terms ' Note by Witness: The balancing claim related to the FEOGA years ending in October 1996 and 1997. The balancing sum was