Departmental officials this week, IT supplier Accenture to take the stand next week

Accenture will be giving evidence to MPs on Monday about the cause of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) failure to pay out vital subsidies to British farmers on time.

Company representatives will be cross examined over what they know about the high profile failure, which resulted in agency chief executive Johnston McNeil being removed from his post.

The move follows the committee's grilling this week of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) permanent secretary Helen Ghosh.

Accenture are responsible for the systems on which RPA payouts depend. At an earlier hearing in January the committee heard that contract costs rose from more than doubled to £37m. RPA officials said the over-run resulted from EU policy changes after the start of the project.

Farmers are now receiving interim payouts based on 80 per cent of claims after the RPA abandoned assertions that their arrangements were working perfectly and admitted they had broken down.

Committee member and Labour MP David Taylor said after the hearing it was not clear what caused the collapse. 'I shall be pressing Accenture very hard next week,' he said.

Neither Ghosh, nor former permanent secretary Sir Brian Bender, nor sustainable farming, food and fisheries director general Andy Lebrecht were able to answer questions about what
system testing was carried out before the final decision to proceed.

Ghosh blamed an underestimation of the number of claims that would be made under a new subsidy system and failings with the system used to verify claims.

She admitted being warned of difficulties but said action was taken to de-risk the project and the system had passed Gateway reviews.

Defra sub-committee chairman and Conservative MP Michael Jack called for details from the department setting out the cause of the collapse in a way understandable by non-experts.