Here’s one for Burning Our Money. The number of Defra staff earning more than £100,000 has trebled in the past five years.

This cannot surely be linked to their performance as it struggles with waste and recycling, climate change, floods, coastal erosion, supporting our farmers – and ensuring they get their payments on time. We now learn that delays in payments have led to the taxpayer picking up the bill for spectacular fines totalling £63 million. The government has put by £292 million to cover the final cost of EU fines.

A press release just issued by the Conservative Press Office in Brussels describes how the cost of Margaret Beckett’s calamitous failure as Environment Secretary to get the 2005 Single Farm Payments out in time became clearer last night after it emerged British taxpayers had already paid £63 million in EU fines for failing to meet the statutory deadline.

The figure was published last night in a Commons written reply from Environment Minister Jonathan Shaw. The National Audit Office said last month that Defra has set aside a total of £292 million to cover possible fines, which are customarily announced by the Commission in the spring.

The Minister also revealed that the number of staff earning £100,000 or more at Defra had more than trebled in the past five years. In 2002, eight people were on such salaries, but that figure was 25 last year.

MEP Neil Parish, Conservative Agricultural spokesman for the EP, said:

“The fact our government has already paid out this much before the full extent of the fines has been announced suggests Defra is expecting an expensive rebuke from the European Commission.

“British farmers are still recovering from calamitous failures at Defra that led to so many farmers receiving their payments excessively late. Margaret Beckett introduced a complex system for making payments against all the advice being offered. While there has been widespread incompetence, the main reasons for the delay were poor Ministerial decisions.

“Unfortunately, while the EU is justified to impose these fines, current evidence suggests the Treasury will pay for them by cutting Defra’s budget.

“If Defra is to make cutbacks, perhaps it should begin by halting the huge number of officials on vast salaries. British farmers will be incensed to hear the department’s bureaucracy has bulged at a time when its frontline services are to be substantially cut.

“British farmers continue to suffer as a result of Labour.”

If these huge fines are to be offset against Defra at a time when it faces so many crucial challenges, how on earth is it going to improve on its delivery? Matters can only get worse, and this is very worrying as I believe our agricultural landscape particularly needs much more support, that food security and drought stress are very real problems we will be facing in the near future.