A PARLIAMENTARY report berating ministers for not doing enough research before making a historic ruling on the biggest farm shake-up in years has landed too late, a regional farming representative said this week.

"Anything that makes the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs take account of the wider ramifications of its policy is to be welcomed, but it should have been there earlier," said the Country Land Business Association's North West director Douglas Chalmers.

He was responding to the critical report released last Thursday from Defra's parliamentary watchdog, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

The report from the influential group of MPs said the introduction of the English single farm payment model as a result of Common Agricultural Policy reforms was not properly thought through. Rather, the MPs concluded that it seemed to have been based on "pragmatism and political expediency".

It further highlighted concerns over the distortions that will result from having different payment systems in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and cast doubt on the ability of the Rural Payments Agency to cope with the new system from January.

Mr Chalmers agreed with the committee's conclusions but added: "If it was going to be influencing Defra it should have been done earlier and had some bearing on their decisions."

As a result of an EU-wide CAP shake-up traditional subsidies are being dropped next year for a single farm payment (SFP) to each holding which will not be linked to production. Defra announced in February that it would pay England's farmers a flat-rate SFP based on land area which would be phased in over the next eight years.

In an unpopular move Ministers further ruled that farmers in Severely Disadvantaged Areas - largely the uplands - would get less per hectare than those elsewhere. There was anger that the system would seriously disadvantage those on the margins of SDAs including hundreds of Cumbrian farmers.

After appeals, Defra has now agreed that the payment will be split by three regions but Defra is now under fire for failing to foresee the impact of its decision on individual farming sectors.

Farming Minister Lord Whitty conceded to MPs that the department had not worked how the SFP would affect individual sectors. Research about the economic, social and environmental impact of the payment did not appear to be "sufficiently detailed", said the committee's report. Defra's announcement of the SFP scheme was not accompanied by substantial supporting material whereas their colleagues in Northern Ireland published 78 pages of detailed analysis in support of their scheme.

The report states: "Without obvious evidence to the contrary, we are forced to conclude that Defra's decision about the basis of the SFP was based on pragmatism and political expediency.

"We believe the Government should have produced an in-depth study of the likely impacts of the various options for the Single Payment scheme prior to making its decision."

The impact of the two-tier SFP system was clearly "not fully thought through" and "Ministers should have been alert to the consequences of their proposals for SDAs".

The report urged Defra to now speedily produce its promised analysis of the economic impact of the scheme on English farming and highlight the system's winners and losers as well as the environmental impacts. Research was also required on the implications of having four different UK payment systems.