Enough is enough!

We are now facing a situation that is ruining decent individual businesses; that is depriving the Scottish economy of more than £300 million of liquidity at a time when it can least stand it with big challenges in other sectors like oil, gas, steel and even whisky, who are all big contributors to Scotland's GDP; and the biggest scandal of all the misuse of public funds. Now even worse than the £40 million overspend on the new IT system for NHS 24 in Scotland, which has already cost two CEOs of the beleaguered public agency their jobs.

Let's look at the facts, the broken promises, the downright lies and possible remedies.

Firstly the facts! The Auditor General for Scotland flagged up "ongoing risks to delivery and overall value for money" to the Scottish Parliament in October 2014, of the IT system to deliver the BPS.

In October 2015, the Auditor General updated the Scottish Parliament: "The programme is costing significantly more and taking longer to implement than planned. Capital spending in 2014/15 was £50 million, £32 million more than budgeted. The total forecast cost of the programme is now £178 million, 74% above the amount included in the original business case. The largest element of spend relates to the IT delivery partner, £45 million in 2014/15, more than twice the amount forecast. There remain significant risks to successful delivery. The timescale for implementing the remaining elements of the IT system for direct support payments is now very tight. Any inadequacies in the control system implemented are likely to have significant financial consequences arising from the potential disallowance of European funding".

So, 18 months and now more than £180 million of taxpayers' money later, despite numerous warnings from their Auditor General, the Scottish Government continues to spend our money on a failing IT system which will now almost certainly lead to disallowances (fines) from the EU, probably on two fronts.

Firstly, it is increasingly likely they will miss the payment window for farmers of the end of June and, secondly, the payment system has to be capable of audit by the EU.

It is clear the Auditor General doesn't believe that will be the case. Even today, for the lucky minority that have been paid, there appears no consistency or logic for the payment percentages from one claimant to another, and area offices can't explain the differences.

Furthermore, the IT system has so far been unable to accept any changes attempted to be uploaded as a result of land inspections last year. Consequently, this group cannot be paid. This would be a key element of any audit and another spectacular failure of the system.

The guy employed to deliver this mess is long gone, but his boss in the Civil Service is still in post. He is the one that has presided over missed delivery targets and totally misused taxpayers' money.

If Jonathan Pryce, the Director of the Agriculture, Food and Rural Communities Directorate of ScotGov was in some other position (CEO of NHS 24 for example) he would have been long gone too. But in two years the bill has mounted and the crisis deepened.

There can be absolutely no excuse for such negligent and wanton misuse of taxpayers' money, and no excuse for the stress that ScotGov's mismanagement has placed on farmers up and down the country, not to mention its own people at the 'coal face' fielding the questions with no idea what to say.

And if you call the much heralded Helpline, as I did the other day, to add insult to injury it wasn't working. It is a national scandal well beyond the boundaries of a few upset farmers.

And the response as recently as last week to this is almost as astonishing as the scandal itself. A ScotGov spokeswoman amazingly tried to justify the overspend: "the IT system for the Common Agricultural Policy would distribute more than £4 billion of payments to farmers and crofters over the current CAP period. The computer system cost equated to about 4% of the overall CAP budget for this period, but was expected to last many years to come" she said.

Meanwhile, over the last 18 months Richard Lochhead has continued to justify, or excuse, the inexcusable in countless speeches, statements and press releases to the Scottish Parliament, stakeholders and his long suffering customers - us!

From late 2014 until late 2015, despite the warnings of the Auditor General, the tone of these statements made it seem payments would be delayed a little, but the Scottish Government were in control.

Of course, as events have unfolded, nothing could be further from the truth. On December 10, 2015, he was still claiming "most people would get an advance by the end of January with payments starting in December".

He also committed to "confirming the EU rule that all farmers would have full visibility of the value of their entitlements for the full five years of the transition periods".

Of course, with just over a month to go that will never happen and will be another black mark when the EU auditors come calling.

And to make matters worse, he was still boasting to MSPs how the "Scottish Government has an exceptional record of making CAP payments on time".

By January 20, 2016, he was still "aiming to pay the majority of farmers by the end of January, and to do all we can to minimise any delays in other payment schemes". This was the first hint of trouble for LFASS, the Beef Calf Scheme etc, and trouble there will surely be in spades.

Now, it is clear these assurances are, at best worthless, and at worst plain lies. His staff has dumped him in it up to his neck and he has no idea how to sort the problem - in fact, the problem is now escalating into delays of payments for other schemes.

The scale of the disaster is now clear in the latest panic stricken announcement of £20million worth of interest free loans that ScotGov appears to be offering desperate customers.

This announcement is both damning and disgusting in equal measure. It shows a department out of control reacting to events not managing them, and a Cabinet Secretary out of his depth prepared to make condescending announcements and apologies in a vain attempt to save his own skin.

So what now? NFUS is already lobbying the Parliament and engaging with the Auditor General but they must surely go to Nicola Sturgeon and demand part payment for all before the period of purdah starts for the up and coming election. They only have a month to do this.

Secondly, LFASS must be paid immediately no matter what it takes.

Thirdly, they should call for the resignation of both the Cabinet Secretary and his director for incompetence. A new face is needed to get honest answers and solutions to this mess right now before the Civil Service is left in sole charge as politicians start campaigning for the May election.

NFUS missed a glorious opportunity to hold ScotGov to account at its agm and now the very future of the organisation, like the future of many individual farm businesses, is at stake.

It has been too cosy with Scot Gov for too long and in return it has been shafted, even to the extent that the CabSec and his speech writers are now trying to blame NFUS for making the system too complex, thereby contributing to this debacle.

Meanwhile, Richard Lochhead may claim to be the champion of the Scottish Food and Drink Industry, he may even believe he is.

Unfortunately, his Civil Servants, who make and deliver policy, don't seem to share that view. If they did they wouldn't have presided over ripping the productive heart out of that food and drink industry by designing an unfair scheme they can't implement.

At a time when income from the North Sea is contracting beyond our wildest nightmares, who in their right mind would shaft another important national industry - but that's exactly what's happening and it needs to stop right now.