THE delay in receiving Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) cheques is putting Yorkshire's farmers at a severe competitive disadvantage.

Welsh and Scottish farmers received their funds before Christmas but only around one in ten English farmers have been paid. The head of the Rural Payments Agency was sacked last week but Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett should take the responsibility for introducing an excessively bureaucratic methodology for calculating the new single farm payment.

Defra should accept responsibility for this failure, apologise and compensate our farmers.

It's not as if farmers are asking for special treatment. All they want is the money they are entitled to, which is being paid to farmers across the EU. Our farmers are finding it difficult to compete with their continental counterparts.

How many farmers will be forced out of business by these blunders? If a farmer were late in paying his bill, he would soon receive a red letter or worse. Defra should compensate farmers at once for the huge distress caused to them.

Timothy Kirkhope,

MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber,

Main Street,

Scotton, North Yorkshire.

Updated: 09:46 Monday, March 27, 2006