Commenting on the evidence given by the former head of the Rural Payments Agency to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Liberal Democrat Shadow Defra Secretary, Chris Huhne MP said:

"Johnston McNeill says he gave strong advice to ministers that they should learn to walk before they tried to run, and should implement a simple system basing new farm payments on what had been paid out historically rather than attempting to introduce new refinements straight away.

"If ministers challenge this account, they should announce an inquiry. If not, it was Margaret Beckett’s decision to introduce a complex hybrid system and she must therefore bear the brunt of the blame for the horrendous mistakes and hardship that followed. This makes her promotion to the Foreign Office even more extraordinary and indefensible.

"It’s staggering that Margaret Beckett only met Johnston McNeill twice during what has been one of the biggest bureaucratic bungles in the recent history of agriculture. That amounts to astonishing negligence."