A WESTMORLAND farmer is set to take a Government minister to task over the mountain of paperwork faced by farmers.

Tony Dixon, from Kitts Crag Farm at Selside, will meet junior minister Joyce Quin on February 8, to discuss the endless Government form-filling involved in dealings with the British Cattle Movement Service and schemes such as the Over Thirty Month Scheme.

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins arranged the meeting between Mr Dixon and the Minister.

He said: "The endless form filling which Brussels and Whitehall alike have piled on South Cumbrian farmers is, in many cases, just adding to their already desperate plight.

Mr Dixon told me he spends on average one-and-a-half days per week filling in paperwork - no wonder farmers I speak to are increasingly desperate.

"I hope that some of these problems laid out by Mr Dixon in black and white will drill a bit of Cumbrian common sense into the paper-pushers in Whitehall."